Resources and Support: Specific RTS tutorials

Specific RTS tutorials

Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: The Lounge
Forum Name: Resources and Support
Forum Discription: Help your fellow pixel artists out with links to good tutorials, other forums, software, fonts, etc. Bugs and support issues should go here as well.
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=26359
Printed Date: 11 September 2025 at 6:14pm

Topic: Specific RTS tutorials

Posted By: Dinofly
Subject: Specific RTS tutorials
Date Posted: 13 August 2018 at 12:00am

Hello hello,

I'm working on an RTS game, and my units and pretty much everything is flat, top view at 90 degrees.

Since I have everything running, I'd like to create something similar to Dune 2000 & red alert, which have a lot more ISO in them so I'd like to ask if anybody has any links to good tutorials specific for older RTS games.

Replies:

Posted By: NancyGold
Date Posted: 26 September 2018 at 4:11pm

Huh.. since nobody answered it... Red Alert and Dune 2000 had actual voxel 3d models, and raytraced models for buildings. Warcraft 2 had paint over raytraced models.

I suggest you to start with 3d model first, because isometry is hard to do by eyesight, and for RTS you will need a lot of sprites and directions. Moreover, there are perspective and non-perspective iso. I.e. in Warcraft 2 some sprites had perspective, while pure isometry is an orthogonal projection. There are also various kinds of what people call "isometry" (it is a buzzword now): many RTS games use military projection, which is also used by Ultima Online, while Diablo used modification of proper isometry:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isometric_computer_graphics#Differences_with_%22true%22_isometric_projection

Given that your first task would be setting up the type of projection you will use, but that is of course after you figured out your setting, story and art direction.