How to Create an RTS Game

Download a game design engine. This is a program that provides the necessary framework for the development of an RTS game. Stratagus and ORTS are free RTS engines.

Write out a game plot and back story. Give your game a specific setting, such as medieval times, the present day, a post-apocalyptic era or the distant future. Create multiple factions for the game and describe the situation of conflict that exists between them.

Create game units. Make a variety of units that fulfill various capacities in gameplay and combat, such as construction, repair, reconnaissance, light combat, heavy combat, raiding, sniping, air support, anti-aircraft and a superweapon. Assign costs to these units according to their usefulness. Every RTS game has some resource or currency that determines a player's ability to create new units; decide how much of this resource or currency a player must expend for each type of unit. Design your units in such a way that all of the units of a particular faction have visual similarities.

Create buildings. Assign specific tasks to each building, such as unit production and research.

Establish a technology tree. Lay out all of the technologies, units and buildings that each faction can create in such a way that the more advanced ones only become available after players have done the necessary construction and research building up to them.

Run game tests on a plain map. Work out any bugs that occur in gameplay.

Create game maps. Make terrains that challenge players in various ways. Create some that are symmetrical "hubs" that give the same starting situations to all players. Create others that give asymmetrical starting positions, possibly with more players on one side of the battle than on the other.

Create single-player campaigns. Make a string of maps that, instead of employing general artificial intelligence, have specific situations that the player must face in which her computer opponents have specific tasks to carry out. For instance, some campaign maps may have reinforcements arrive in the battle at certain points in time. Place triggers on the map that cause events to occur when the player goes to certain places or accomplishes certain goals.