If you've recently visited our friends over CNCNZ.com, you might have seen a news post speculating about an upcoming Command & Conquer game from a EA mobile division, based in a job listing post, informed by Cypher.
And moving down a little bit we have:
To complete this information, according to what was posted on CNCNZ.com, the boss would be Jim Vessela, who was a producer on Red Alert 3 and some other C&C games. However, CNCNZ.com clearly states that this is a speculation and the game in the job listing post could be related to other EA IPs. It could even be Star Wars or another type of game, such as an RPG.
If you remember the last official under development real time strategy Command & Conquer game, the announcement above could make sense as an upcoming Command & Conquer game. EA was already trying to create a Free To Play Command & Conquer game that would work in a live-service environment. That game would rely a lot on online platforms and stimulate people to either play it like a freak (farm for days) to unlock new factions and bonus that could compromise the balance of the game under some circumstances. Instead of wasting your time farming, you could pay real money for it (money would be their ultimate objective, of course). Their virtual money would allow them to sell items to anyone in the world under their own regulations and avoiding taxes in many countries due to their outdated fiscal laws. Extensions and "new games" would arrive as downloadable content (DLCs), which would free or paid, and it sales would be restricted to Origin (that belongs to EA, of course). The way the game relied on EA servers to run everything (even single player AI) makes modding not viable at all (client machine no longer process the game), not to mention that would serve as an excuse to roll out premium services for those who paid monthly rates for it.
I'm not surprised if that this mobile game follows this direction, regardless if it is a Command & Conquer game. But be aware that EA already has some experience with Command & Conquer RTS games on mobile platforms. Perhaps, the best of them is the Red Alert 3 port to iPhone as seen in the video below:
Bringing the gameplay experience of a RTS game to a touchscreen mobile interface is a complicated mission. You need to take into account a lot of things, specially the following user actions:
- Map scrolling: Scrolling the screen with touch screen devices nowadays is an easy mission. Carefully touch your finger in the screen, move it and then stop touching it. The problem is the precision of your scrolling in the battlefield. If you just violently scroll like you could do to browse a site faster, you would end up in the other side of the map. I think it is possible to calibrate it to allow slow scrolls, fast scrolls and to use the map to click reach other parts of the map.
- Unit Selection: Depending on your size screen and the size of the units in this screen, the precision to select the units that you desire may become a headache to the user.
- Issuing Orders: Ordering a unit to kill another may not be as hard as it seems, bit when you miss a keyboard, customizing this order might be hard. What if you want a unit to force fire something? Or just patrol or guard an area? Or just to kill one infantry that is inside a huge group of soldiers? I.e.: If you have a Yuri in the middle of a bunch of conscripts, you'd certainly focus your fire on the Yuri, who is more dangerous than the other units? Lack of precision here can be a headache under these circunstances.
- Building/Unit Construction: Sidebars take a big part of the screen. Andf considering that you need some precision to touch your finger in the correct icons, you'll surely use a big part of your screen for it. But there are other challenges: How do you cancel orders? Is it practical to select buildings to issue exit waypoints in a touchscreen? Would the touchscreen precision be acceptable when switching between the production tabs from production facilities of the same type (i.e.: switching between the productions of multiples barracks)?
My personal opinion on how to deal with this matter is that a mobile RTS game interface should be focused on teams. Let's say 5 teams, to not overload the interface, where it could be distributed as 2 defensive teams, two offensive teams and one for random missions. The button that allows the users to select these teams could be exactly as seen in the iPhone Red Alert in the video above, although there are only 3 teams there. But the use of these teams could be different, specially when constructing units. If you have one of these activated and you choose to build infantry or tanks, these units would automatically join this team once they are built and they could move towards this team, to get together with them. To change teams of a unit, drag and drop them to another team. Double hitting a unit would select all units of that type on the screen (which could be dragged and dropped to a team) and a triple hit would select all units on the screen, using the screen instead of a dotted square as selection box.
Issuing orders should be restricted to conquer a region. So, click to select a team and click in a region to conquer it. If units stay together with a team, you wouldn't need guard orders. To prevent certain enemy buildings from being destroyed by your units, if you wish to conquer them, you'd need a team with an engineer to issue an order to conquer that building before a team of yours conquer that building. The implementation of these ideas require a smart automatic micro-management solutions that would deserve another huge post to get in details with.
The construction of buildings should be similar to what the Soviets do in Red Alert 3. I mean, you choose the building and place it before it constructs. But it will only appear in the map after the construction is finished.
And the remaining detail is that this unit and building constructions, orders, etc should be queued by default, with buttons to cancel the build queue or the order queue for the current team.
But rather than expect EA to do this for us, I've seen the future. A great tiberium future and ore future as well: we have to consider that there is already a great public engine that is evolving a lot recently called OpenRA. It is free to play, online and offline with an unlimited mod support. Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 support for it is getting better and the videos below shows two mods for it that uses the Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 features from OpenRA. Check it out:
Shattered Paradise (Tiberian Sun based mod for OpenRA):
Attaque Sup?rior (Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge based mod for OpenRA)
| Quote: |
| Come and join an exciting team that?s redefining mobile development at EA. Collaboration, gameplay and rapid iteration are what makes us tick as we push to innovate on one of EA?s beloved IPs to be a top 5 grossing mobile title. Our team is growing fast and we?re looking for the most talented and creative people who are inspired by our mission and fit well within the spirit of our culture. Nothing gets us more charged than the opportunity to deliver an awesome players first game experience that lets our team do something that?s never been done before at EA Mobile. Come and see for yourself, the future is here. EA Mobile is seeking an exceptionally skilled and enthusiastic Combat Designer. In this role you must own the creation and gameplay balance of all content and systems pertaining to combat. The ideal candidate has a proven track record designing and balancing various combat units, special attacks, powers, and combat structures. You have a thorough knowledge of game design theory and tools pipelines, telemetry and data analysis and interpretation. You possess strong leadership skills and production sensibilities. You have the talent to produce and implement the highest quality work. You want to take risks, to invent, and are driven to make the best games in the industry. |
And moving down a little bit we have:
| Quote: |
| Preferred Qualifications ? ? Experience designing combat systems for Real-time Strategy or RPG games. ? ?Multiple shipped titles, ideally on Mobile platforms. ? ?Experience in game programming or LUA scripting. ? ?Experience designing, implementing and managing large numbers of game assets such as player abilities, units, or items. ? ?Experience working on games in a live-service environment. ? ?Experience designing content and systems for F2P games. ... |
To complete this information, according to what was posted on CNCNZ.com, the boss would be Jim Vessela, who was a producer on Red Alert 3 and some other C&C games. However, CNCNZ.com clearly states that this is a speculation and the game in the job listing post could be related to other EA IPs. It could even be Star Wars or another type of game, such as an RPG.
If you remember the last official under development real time strategy Command & Conquer game, the announcement above could make sense as an upcoming Command & Conquer game. EA was already trying to create a Free To Play Command & Conquer game that would work in a live-service environment. That game would rely a lot on online platforms and stimulate people to either play it like a freak (farm for days) to unlock new factions and bonus that could compromise the balance of the game under some circumstances. Instead of wasting your time farming, you could pay real money for it (money would be their ultimate objective, of course). Their virtual money would allow them to sell items to anyone in the world under their own regulations and avoiding taxes in many countries due to their outdated fiscal laws. Extensions and "new games" would arrive as downloadable content (DLCs), which would free or paid, and it sales would be restricted to Origin (that belongs to EA, of course). The way the game relied on EA servers to run everything (even single player AI) makes modding not viable at all (client machine no longer process the game), not to mention that would serve as an excuse to roll out premium services for those who paid monthly rates for it.
I'm not surprised if that this mobile game follows this direction, regardless if it is a Command & Conquer game. But be aware that EA already has some experience with Command & Conquer RTS games on mobile platforms. Perhaps, the best of them is the Red Alert 3 port to iPhone as seen in the video below:
Bringing the gameplay experience of a RTS game to a touchscreen mobile interface is a complicated mission. You need to take into account a lot of things, specially the following user actions:
- Map scrolling: Scrolling the screen with touch screen devices nowadays is an easy mission. Carefully touch your finger in the screen, move it and then stop touching it. The problem is the precision of your scrolling in the battlefield. If you just violently scroll like you could do to browse a site faster, you would end up in the other side of the map. I think it is possible to calibrate it to allow slow scrolls, fast scrolls and to use the map to click reach other parts of the map.
- Unit Selection: Depending on your size screen and the size of the units in this screen, the precision to select the units that you desire may become a headache to the user.
- Issuing Orders: Ordering a unit to kill another may not be as hard as it seems, bit when you miss a keyboard, customizing this order might be hard. What if you want a unit to force fire something? Or just patrol or guard an area? Or just to kill one infantry that is inside a huge group of soldiers? I.e.: If you have a Yuri in the middle of a bunch of conscripts, you'd certainly focus your fire on the Yuri, who is more dangerous than the other units? Lack of precision here can be a headache under these circunstances.
- Building/Unit Construction: Sidebars take a big part of the screen. Andf considering that you need some precision to touch your finger in the correct icons, you'll surely use a big part of your screen for it. But there are other challenges: How do you cancel orders? Is it practical to select buildings to issue exit waypoints in a touchscreen? Would the touchscreen precision be acceptable when switching between the production tabs from production facilities of the same type (i.e.: switching between the productions of multiples barracks)?
My personal opinion on how to deal with this matter is that a mobile RTS game interface should be focused on teams. Let's say 5 teams, to not overload the interface, where it could be distributed as 2 defensive teams, two offensive teams and one for random missions. The button that allows the users to select these teams could be exactly as seen in the iPhone Red Alert in the video above, although there are only 3 teams there. But the use of these teams could be different, specially when constructing units. If you have one of these activated and you choose to build infantry or tanks, these units would automatically join this team once they are built and they could move towards this team, to get together with them. To change teams of a unit, drag and drop them to another team. Double hitting a unit would select all units of that type on the screen (which could be dragged and dropped to a team) and a triple hit would select all units on the screen, using the screen instead of a dotted square as selection box.
Issuing orders should be restricted to conquer a region. So, click to select a team and click in a region to conquer it. If units stay together with a team, you wouldn't need guard orders. To prevent certain enemy buildings from being destroyed by your units, if you wish to conquer them, you'd need a team with an engineer to issue an order to conquer that building before a team of yours conquer that building. The implementation of these ideas require a smart automatic micro-management solutions that would deserve another huge post to get in details with.
The construction of buildings should be similar to what the Soviets do in Red Alert 3. I mean, you choose the building and place it before it constructs. But it will only appear in the map after the construction is finished.
And the remaining detail is that this unit and building constructions, orders, etc should be queued by default, with buttons to cancel the build queue or the order queue for the current team.
But rather than expect EA to do this for us, I've seen the future. A great tiberium future and ore future as well: we have to consider that there is already a great public engine that is evolving a lot recently called OpenRA. It is free to play, online and offline with an unlimited mod support. Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 support for it is getting better and the videos below shows two mods for it that uses the Tiberian Sun and Red Alert 2 features from OpenRA. Check it out:
Shattered Paradise (Tiberian Sun based mod for OpenRA):
Attaque Sup?rior (Red Alert 2: Yuri's Revenge based mod for OpenRA)