The scale of those games was already nuts, but that would 10x things.
The mechanics are old school, as with basically all RTS, but the openness allows for far more experiments than one would assume in a proprietary game.
Payday 2 is my favourite example since they've had a bug since Day 1 that lobotomizes the AI subsystem.
Specifically, there's a global cap of 1 action for all enemies per game tick, so when there's too many enemies the reaction time is 5 seconds.
The mod Full Speed Swarm fixes this bug and the game is unplayable without collaboration and a lot of skill.
It's also unnoticeable until you die or if you do a ton of research on the AI. I used to host pubs with the mod to troll other players who suddenly found the game impossible to play at lower difficulties.
I think it's possible we get an AI driven RTS but the demand is too small right now unless its a recruitment vehicle for the military.
When people say they want better AI, they mean they want smarter + human-like AI without "cheating" (more resources, perfect aim, rubber banding, perfect knowledge, etc).
And even if you build a human-like AI, it's not going to be fun for players if it's too good, just like how humans have the most fun playing against other players at their level, not against the top-ranked players in the world.
So to keep AI fun, there is always going to be artificial limitations, and "people want terrible AI" doesn't really capture that.
One example might be games where you can hear footsteps or a branch snap. With stereo audio, you could technically derive exactly where someone is, possibly even which room they are in. When that raw signal is provided directly to a machine, it might accidentally be too good, know which bush you crawled into, and shoot into it.
Yet humans would only be able to go "I think I heard a branch snap" or "someone must be creeping up on me" even though they are given the same signal as the AI.
I don't think the main game would encourage that - the more obscure the protocol, the less bot in the actual game (even though I don't think it's hard to find protocol documentation or just plug into an official client). OpenRSC, a revival of RuneScape Classic do have botting worlds, but personally RSC is not "fun" for me.
There are programmer games like Screeps (which the new Arena version just launched at the end of last year), but those game usually do not allow manual play or only indirect play. I tried Screeps, but I'm not good at strategy games, so once I get the runtime working I lose interest and none of my friend would want to help me strategize in game that they do not understand.
You start out very manual and then automate more and more parts of the game.
There is even a "signal network" function that can be used to program.
You can continue to do things in manual ways even later in the game.
EDIT: changed to "manual ways"
An API? An SDK? An in-game editor? Tutorials? Or is this more a "I want a factorio-like"?
I've been building economic engines and simulations for the last few years now and over the last 3 months in my off time I've been getting increasingly in the weeds about how to design a game that fits this
I've specifically been exploring using a voxel game as a base (think minecraft-like) however because I'm deeply interested in minion management / design I've been looking at how to create a programming / play experience that actually is fun and makes sense
What I'm trying to understand is what is the fun overlap between these
I have some opinions / ideas of my own and what I've been trying to do, however I'd be really interested in what other people are looking for to see where the overlap is and whether it fits the shape of what I'm building and whether I want to really commit the time to prototyping some things to see if there is interest to support this type of playstyle
Just to be super clear, what I've built so far specifically is targeting multiplayer
This, however, would be a significant obstacle to non-programmers. You might consider offering an in-game editor similar to Scratch or BYOB for people who want to dip into programming. It'd be a fun way for them to learn
But this would probably never fly because it would become a training ground for people who make malicious bots.
The reason I'm comparing it to factorio is because that game though still top down is designed specifically with a player in mind automating their labor and then slowly taking on a complex logistics game as they go and doing so fully in the game, the play is in laying out structures within the game
Satisfactory for example has different choices that lead to different gameplay as it's first person 3d, the play is in setting up and managing logistical structures and hitting production targets
That is interesting, however for my tastes both of these are a little too static an experience for what I want to build
I'm still working out the details of what I'm putting together, but I have a decent high level idea of what my goals are =)
What I want to know is, if people play this kind of game, what are they looking for / wanting?
What's a good "MVP" or minimal gameloop that would feel satisfying?
I want to quickly work out if I can serve either the gameplay desire or the gameplay fantasy or if it is just too hard to provide a fun experience for this kind of play in which case I should table this and focus on what I'm currently doing
However I'm still engaging with this because I would like to create a fun playspace here I just don't know what other programmers would want especially in the context of what the GP was asking, which is a mix of manual intervention and programming / automation
It's what I've been doing, I'm asking what I'm asking to see if it surfaces anything that I've been missing / not thinking about and trying to work out what people would see as table stakes
In the same way that I know that playtesting reveals flaws and gaps in my design and thinking, this is a earlier version of that process that has in my experience helped me when building non-game related things
It may very much be the case that this is not the kind of thing that I should do when focused on building a game, but I don't think it hurts to ask
The problem with these kinds of game is at some point you'll run into tech debts - your factory layout is not optimal, and the game optimize your starting zone so migrating out means you may lose simple access to starting resources. I tried optimizing for large factory up front, but it's like a startup with a monolith running on a Kubernetes.
Satisfactory solved this by having a fixed map and 3D, but it comes with its own challenges. Good Company partially solved this by replacing belts with humans who can walk anywhere you want, and introduce belt at a late game stage (which I quit around that stage - the game already gets repetitive by that point).
Anyway, what I was describing was not those kind of automation games. RuneScape is an RPG game with over 20+ skills. What make it interesting is that RuneScape bot engines (which exists, but is illegal) do provide all the high level primitives for you in Java. You could provide a world coordinate and a walking script will do all the walk for you even if it is the other side of the world map. It should felt like making games in Scratch instead of reinventing serialization in Screeps.
Other games with scripting also often don't allow human-in-the-loop. If a bot in an automation game get stuck because you forgot to program how to restock teleports, you have to stop it and reprogram. RuneScape bots don't block inputs - if you forgot to make the bot handle stamina exhaustion just click the run button yourself without stopping the script.
RuneScape also comes with strategizing for the human, while the solution space is quite fixed and well discussed by the community if you don't want to find out yourselves. If your Slayer task is green dragons, do you go to a spot that is far from a bank and lose efficiency or give up the loot, or do you go to PvP zone and use cannon (multi target auto turret)? If I write a bot, I probably will write a Wildy Green Dragon script instead of a generic fight-anything script so that it will know to bring cannon and place it at the optimal spot to target all spawns at once. Same goes for many other skills - if I train crafting or construction do I sink millions and go for the highest XP rate or do I go very slowly and get a slight profit out of it.
I'd also add that having a community marketplace would also helps. RuneScape have underground marketplace for bots, with free scripts that probably get you banned, and paid "private" scripts that supposedly undetected. I also have played Mars First Logistics where you build a vehicle Lego-style, then deliver weird cargo like a block of ice or a crate of oranges without a lid. The game have Steam Workshop support where you can just skip building your own vehicle and try to drive someone else's vehicle to destination. I got an ice block pusher, which I need to figure out how to put the ice in (just surround the block, close gate so the block cannot escape), then the map has hills that make your ice fall over the bottom anyway.
I have thought of the same btw. There's also an actual Idler MMO on Steam I think is Free to Play called Idleon or something like that, its more side scroller though. You can play it and progress, or you can idle and let your character level as well.
The problem is, the reason the bots exist now is to sell the account or farm gp. The only way this would work would be if that bot only world was gated off from the rest of the economy like special gamemode/league worlds, naturally destroying any reason most bot makers make bots. Your love of automating for sport puts you in the minority of botters sadly haha
Officially blessed OSRS private servers are on the roadmap IIRC... maybe there's a future for a bot-olympics in one of those?
The difference in compute scale between the Darwin winning program (44 machine instructions) and an agent today that calls into an LLM is rather mind boggling.
I imagine this also works in multiplayer
it's super buggy and yet doesn't work on mobile but it's been my childhood dream to make an rts and I have something I can have fun adding different dynamics.
it's much more fun to watch the agent struggle developing an AI instead of play the game itself (tried that at the beginning too).
What would stop us from making it multiplayer and having two or more human players compete over common resources & goals?
I've been getting increasingly interested in trying to work out what this would look like
How would it feel to only interact with your base/economy/army via prompting and face someone doing the same.
Would words per minute replace APM, what would the meta look like etc. Would you be able to adjust the system prompt for your "army" to suit your play style?
For more context: https://x.com/idosal1/status/2011886884830789808
My take was that it’s easier to trace who is doing what (and what the agent hierarchy looks like) when agents’ locations are fixed.