Multiplayer RTS
A Command and Conquer style real-time strategy game for PC. Two asymmetric factions, up to eight players in a single battle, and a battlefield generated fresh every match. Built in Unreal Engine 5.
Client: A game studio
Units and buildings on the field at once
Players in a single battle
Factions that play nothing alike
Levels of unit veterancy
A Command and Conquer style RTS with two asymmetric factions: a high technology military force, and an organic one that grows its buildings rather than constructing them. The asymmetry runs deep enough that few systems can be written once and reused across both sides.
The organic faction is the clearest case. Its buildings begin as eggs spawned from the base, are carried across the field by a worker, and mature in place. There is no standard pipeline for that in an RTS, so we designed and built it.
Around the combat sits the game people play online. Eight player battles, a game browser, friends and invites, and alliances that determine who can fire on whom. Units gain rank as they survive. Maps are generated fresh for each match and reproduced identically on every machine. A player who drops out mid battle rejoins the same running match with their army, buildings and resources intact.
Where the design left a question open, we researched the options, proposed an approach, and built it once approved. Several of the systems now in the game began that way rather than as a line in the original design document.
What we built
The systems inside it
Organic construction
One faction grows its buildings rather than constructing them. The base spawns an egg, a worker carries it to the site, and the building matures in place. No standard RTS pipeline supports this, so we designed and built it.
Scale, without cutting detail
Hundreds of units and buildings on the field at once, at full asset detail. The unit simulation runs on Mass Entity, so the systems absorb army size rather than buckling under it.
Forty unit and building types
The full roster across both factions. Every unit has a primary and a secondary ability, and there are rules for what happens when a vehicle meets infantry.
Online multiplayer
Eight player battles with faction and team select, a custom game browser, friends and invites, in game chat, alliances, and mid match reconnection so a player who loses their connection returns to their army intact.
Achievements, stats and currency
Fifteen tracked statistics and eight achievements through Epic Online Services, driven by real gameplay events, with in game currency.
Veterancy
Units improve as they survive. Five levels, compounding health and damage, and kill credit that resolves correctly whether the killing blow came from a projectile, a melee attack, or a vehicle.
Minimap and fog of war
A minimap built from the ground up, with fog, attack indicators and zoom. Fog of war extended so that non unit actors, such as projectiles and building placements, respect it.
Procedural battlefields
Maps generated per match and reproduced identically on every machine in the game, scaling in size with the player count.
RTS command layer
Control groups, build queues, context aware cursors and hover outlines. The layer that decides whether an RTS feels good to play.
More work
Bring us the hard part
Performance walls, network replication that will not scale, streaming pipelines, real-time systems that have to hold their frame budget. That is the work we want.