You could try Littlewargame.
It's a browser-based RTS written in HTML + Javascript.
There's a reddit community at /r/littlewargame!
Games typically run for less than half an hour, so you can fit one into your lunch break or whatever.
I wouldnt call RTS genre dead, just because we only have one super big esports title. At least we do have one super big esports title. There are others rts games, theyre just not thaat big.
Personally i enjoy Men Of War alot, but its totally different than Starcraft. Its a WW2 game, and its one of those more realistic type ones.
But I assume the next big esports rts will be Warcraft 4. It seems like atm theres noone aside from blizzard who manages to make rts games on this level.
PS: I'm also working on a small rts (playable in browser) http://littlewargame.com/ ;)
I am working on an RTS myself (http://littlewargame.com/play), that is (at least mechanical-wise) pretty close to Starcraft 2. Its written in in javascript and HTML5, which means, it runs in your browser. You can play it for free and without registration needed.
It has a medieval / fantasy setting, so its more like Warcraft 3 in that regard, but the controls are pretty much like sc2, so maybe this is what you are looking for.
Regarding "big", "commercial" games, I also failed to find anything that feels like SC.
This is quite interesting, for me especially because I am also working on an RTS (http://littlewargame.com/play/) and i actually did the same thing a couple of weeks ago, what blizzard (most likely) did here. I lowered the min frame delay from 4 to 3. The reason was pretty much "why not ?". There is not really a reason to have a higher min delay. If the delay gets too low, the game will adjust and put it back higher anyway, so players with good connections benefit from that lowered min delay. That could be also what blizzard had in mind when they decided to lower the delay. An explanation why they kept the change "hidden" could be that its something most players wont even ever recognize plus this is something not so easy to explain to someone who doesn know how this network stuff works and most players would be confused when reading something like "Reduced minimum network frame delay from 4 to 2" in the patchnotes. (I did not put my change in my games patchnotes neither :D )
Little war game should be on this list. It's a multiplayer medieval war game. Starting with only castle, workers, and a gold mine. You have to try to fend up any other players from destroying your town. Loads of fun! The GUI is simple and unique, you can easily play games with your friends or play ranked matches against other players! They also have their own subreddit /r/littlewargame. The dev's frequently visit the subreddit and give feedback to a lot of player suggestions and answer questions for new players. It's a very fun community and really fun game! Come play with us at: http://littlewargame.com
Littlewargame, which is a cute, free indie RTS.
7 Kingdoms, another RTS game. This one is back from 1997 or so, a pretty chill, slowed down one, which i still play up to this day. The developer released the source code a couple of years ago and now there are some fans optimizing stuff for modern systems.
Starcraft II was hugely popular a while back, and DOTA 2 is extremely popular now. For an older graphics look but similar game style to Warcraft II, there is Little War Game, which is free to play and plays in your browser.
Scripts like that are not allowed to be used, since they can give players advantage over other players. You can write a custom AI (http://littlewargame.com/blog/the-littlewargame-ai-api/), which is very encouraged, or use the editor (which will feature some sort of scripting at some point) to create maps / mods with additional features that you like.
Im a dev and im working on a RTS atm which also uses a deterministic lockstep engine just lie Starcraft (http://littlewargame.com) and players have suggested me similar things ("hey, wouldnt it be cool if you could jump into running games as an observer" for example) and as much as i agree how cool it would be, its really not that easy to do with the way the lockstep engine works.
You have to see, just the orders are transmitted in a network game, so all the clients (including all the spectator clients) have to calculate the game on their own from the input that they get. If now a spectator lags for a couple of sec for example, he would be out of sync. His state of the game would not be the same anymore, because the last X sec are missing, he would be X sec behind the others. And the only way he can catch up is: he needs to get the input data of the last X sec from the server, so he can perform those inputs on the client and catch up to the current game state, and therefore the server (and all the other clients have to wait for him, which causes the lag for them). In an engine, where all the units position are sent from the server to the clients all the time, its a different thing: if a client is behind, he just gets all positions from the server and updates his game state and hes up do date immeditely.
You can also see this in the SC2 replays. In case you ever wondered "why the hell cant i just jump to 10 minutes in the replay ??", this is the reason, the replay only stores the players inputs, the same information that is transmitted in a network game. So when you jump to a point in future, the replay actually doesnt really jump, but calculates the whole game up to this point.
Of course, eventually, there would be ways to solve this or ar least make it better, but I just wanted to show that its not that easy.
LittleWarGame is a fantastic game that's been around for years and years and years. It scratched my itch for a while, but I too am always on the lookout for more great web games like it!
http://littlewargame.com/blog/the-littlewargame-ai-api/
You can load new AIs from the options menu.
When you start a game vs CPU, you have the option to load a new AI by clicking on "Computer."
This is all done through the user interface, but I suppose you could write a browers script to do this automatically.
This is a build in function of the way chrome handles full screen programs.
You might find a solution using kiosk mode
I tend to use hotkeys/controlgroups/camerakeys so it's not a problem personally
Idk what's IO, but I've played for a while littlewargame a long time ago. It's a strategy multiplayer game with custom maps and such very similar to warcraft/starcraft gameplay. It's quite fun and competitive and they have also an even smaller community on reddit. Idk how active it's now though.
Jbs is aware. He's working on finding and solving the problem. There's a thread in the Bug Report forum about it.
I'll continue updating the map once the desynch is solved.
I dont really see a reason to dislike a game just because its free. For me the reason to dislike some free games is, because they are pay2win, which is a nogo for me.
At the moment i really enjoy Littlewargame (http://littlewargame.com/play), a RTS that runs in the browser, which is free (and not pay2win).
Thank you for bringing this us to our attention. You can read about our decision in this case HERE:
Feel free to comment on either the forum post or the subreddit and I will respond as quickly as is practicable given my availability.
If you're at work and you've ostensibly exhausted Reddit I'm guessing you have a lot of time on your hands so maybe Little War Game? Its a pretty well made RTS game that runs on your browser without having to install anything. The longest game I've played lasted <30 minutes.
The game rarely loads. It usually gets stuck on the very last bar, as shown in the picture.
Console errors: Failed to load resource: the server responded with a status of 403 (Forbidden)
Uncaught ReferenceError: Network is not defined
Uncaught TypeError: Cannot read property 'onKey' of undefined
GET http://littlewargame.com/play/extern/underscore-min.map 404 (Not Found)
you mean writing an AI in general ? then this is what youre looking for.
or do you mean how to have 2 AIs battle against each other ? This is easy, just load both of them, then open a game, add 2 cpu players, set one AI for one of them and the other AI for the other one, put yourself in the spectator slot and go.
(1) You must be right about the error. How did you come to this conclusion? From the a d[e] undefined error I could not come up with anything tbh.
(2) good to know, thanks
(3) this explains some of my issues, I will check the rest in the editor
(4) ok, I get it now how to find it in http://littlewargame.com/play/lwg-worker.min-v.js
I looked at the your post more thoroughly, and here are the answers:
2, 3. If an information is unavailable through the functions and properties of the scope object, you can use the 'game' object. It's a global variable. It has every information you will need for your AI, even the position of the enemy units, etc.
I was unable to reproduce the problem. If the problem persists, could you send me the error message?
for(x in array) is python, not javascript. You have to use for(x = 0; x < A.length; x++).
I wish you luck in making a good AI for LWG! There are many AIs you could take a look at, which is compiled here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Littlewargame/comments/6s36x4/does_anyone_have_any_harder_ai_than_the_normal/
Don't forget everything has to be on a single picture, in order, and not a video, in the same way you can see on the picture.
So in the end you'll have to sort every single frame together to create a picture similar or identical to the one I provided.
If you want to create a sprite that only uses 4 sides: http://littlewargame.com/play/imgs/units/wolf.png
And for buildings: https://i.imgur.com/sxlc0e3.png
http://littlewargame.com/play/imgs/buildingSheet_new.png
Do not use this for anything except for creating mods in lwg, the copyright only gives you the right to do that. You do not have permission to use it for other projects, buiness use ect ect
Littlewargame has a fresh take on this which I quite enjoy - it has relatively simple faction but it lets you play any of them or even intermix them in a single game. Makes for interesting counters, surprises and teamplay. http://littlewargame.com/
Hey, I want to make a browser game that's similar to Eve online (2D), i want the game to perform perfectly in most of the browsers without any plugins (such as Unity) like LittleWarGame. Or the game should at least function perfectly in most of the browers.
I'm only familiar with HTML, CSS and Javascript, have some light web design background and it stopped right there. That is all of my experience. No programming experience at all and have no idea where to start. I sincerely hope someone here can enlighten me.
This is a good one: Little War Game.
Here are some games people are working on now.
You might be thinking... But those games are shitty! Fair point. But a team of a few people are not going to make anything amazing without some experience. OP has an inexperienced team.
JS has no barriers to entry such as license fees, device restrictions, or weird environment/IDE nonsense. You can easily pass games around via a url and host the game in drop box. Players don't have to install anything. "HTML5 game engines" are generally free, open source, and contain sample code and games.
And in the worst case scenario (the game sucks hard/the team breaks up), you've still learned some JS, not some mix of editors and drag/drop interfaces.
It depends on what platform he wants, but I wouldn't dismiss JS as an option for a novice team. Unity might be better, action to effort wise, and if you have a target platform in mind, native makes sense.
Just discovered this browser game a few days ago on Reddit but it brings back a lot of good RTS memories (AoE, Stronghold Crusader, SC) as those were the games i grew up with.
This has some strategies to play the game (I don't know how updated Xao has been keeping them, but most of them seem relevant to this patch): http://littlewargame.gamepedia.com/Game_Strategies
A guide to hotkeys by SlammerIV: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UDc9eY7sd28
Another good guide to the strategies of the game with a little more depth and a little less quantity than the wiki: http://littlewargame.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=309
Littlewargame. It's a must play for people who don't want to download games not their computer.
I think you'll like it. :)
My Littlewargame blog:
If you are into RTS at all, or have any interest in learning it. Little War Game is a fantastic in browser rts game which can be played fairly competitively despite how simple it is.
Littlewargame (LWG)
Price: Free!
Platform: Windows/Mac/Linux
A browser-based RTS that runs on HTML5! The game is constantly being developed with updates to balance and content. We are currently able to mod to enjoy a different experience of LWG (think custom maps for WC3 and SC2!) Matchmaking is possible too to climb up ranks against your adversaries!
You should be able to run Warcraft 3, as it's kinda old. Same with Age of Empires 2. But they're still crazy fun.
And here's a fun browser RTS. It's actually fully-featured like a regular RTS.
I promise you will not regret clicking this link:
http://littlewargame.com/play/
It's basically AoE. Just play as a guest to check it out. If you make an account you can do matchmaking and all of what you want to do. It's free, plays in browser, and you can easily send this link to anyone to play with friends.
Just a small indie game and not really something ppl would consider eSport, but its a very nice RTS, its running in Browser, is free and its gameplay is good enough to be played on a somewhat high level. There are also small turnaments (~100$ pricepool). http://littlewargame.com/play/
Who knows, maybe in 2 years this is #1 eSport game ;)
ok now I've got something to kill the time at the office when things are slow. I've been also playing this in the office with co-workers http://littlewargame.com/play/, its an in browser RTS that's pretty awesome.
Also in his blog post a while back found here http://littlewargame.com/blog/littlewargame-the-reddit-army-has-arrived/
He talks about wolves and dropships being the newest units he will be bringing to us.
A HTML5 / JS Realtime Strategy Game (running in browser, no registration / plugin / download).
Its a RTS with medieval fantasy setting, multiplayer up to 4 player and a map editor. Ive been working on it for almost a year and still going strong. Been putting a lot of work and love into this.
/r/Littlewargame
Very similar to Age of Mythology, but more compact and fast paced. Completely free right now with nearly daily updates. Includes single and multiplayer.