I was listening to Dixie Chicks song, "Travelin Soldier" (yeah yeah, a part asian wannabe game programmer that listens to "real" Country music...so I''m a bit odd, sue me ) when I started thinking about the lack of personality and attachment in strategy games. When I watch movies like Glory, The Patriot, We Were Soldiers, Braveheart or countless other war movies on a grand scale, you have a feeling of attachment to the soldiers. You feel their fear, their anguish and their passion. And yet in games, none of these elements are present. Is it partially because of the point of view? In movies they often zoom in on soldiers faces, and then it becomes more personal, less distant and cold. I would really really like to capture that sense of personality and attachment in my strategy game but other than the point of view change, I can''t think of how else to do it. I''d like a cinematic feel to my game in that the player shouldn''t be so busy clicking on things that he forgets about the big picture itself. But more importantly I want the player to see his units as people, as living things....both his own troops as well as his enemy. Since my game has Commander objects in charge of BattleGroups, I was thinking of having them be very much like NPC''s in roleplaying games. Giving each one a personality which makes them unique. Also, by having Commanders and the Clusters (groups of units) gain experience they will overtime feel less and less like cannon fodder. I really want to get rid of the cannon fodder mentality that is so prevalent in many games and make the players feel attached to their units. Another thought I had to make Commanders and Clusters feel unique is to watch a little mini-screen of the Commander go off into battle after delivering a little ra-ra speech. Somehow the Commander has to show his personality other than it just being hidden by a bunch of statistics. Ditto for famous fighting units that have proven themselves in battle. Anyone have any other ideas on how to make units in a game feel like they are living breathing people?

Well, I think that to give your units personality, I''d suggest doing two things.

First off, it might help defeat the "drone" feeling that a lot of soldiers have if you made them harder than usual to get- if they''re harder to get, then the player will value them a little more individually- for example of this, see Original War. Of course, having a limited number of troops and permanant troop death has its'' own issues, but there''s a happy balance to be struck.

Also, do what you can to try and establish the untis as different "Characters"- By this, I''d suggest things like having a large selection of portraits/sprites/stock dialog for the characters. Another interesting idea might be to give each character a simple background, and then pick a portriat, sprite, and dialog filter based on that... For a good example of dialog filters, see the playstation RPG Chrono Cross- it features 40+ characters, and to seperate them in scenes with "stock dialog", it runs a filter over said dialog based on the character speaking. While it''s a bit cheesy at the time, it does strike a balance between giving each character individual speech patterns and not having to write and dialog for 40 different characters.

Just a few ideas. Having significantly different graphics and voice clips may help, too- compare, say, the units in Total Annihilation with the units in Starcraft. The Starcraft units, even though they are ultimatley just drones, individually have a lot more personality- created by their individual pictures and voice clips, as opposed to the generic "clanks and whirrs" of the Total Annihilation units.

Although you may not ever really get players to see your units as more than generic drones, some of these methods should allow you to give them more "personality"- thereby taking a few steps in the direction you''re aiming for.

- HC

-- EMail: cloweh@rpi.edu
-- AIM: SeigfriedH

I think giving your main commanders names and personalities is an excellent idea. I know in Rainbow Six each team member had a name and history (not much for personality though) and when a member was killed (in that game it''s permanent) for some characters you would feel kindof bad, "That was my best sharp shooter, those monsters!."

I could relate to the soldiers in Close Combat pretty well. They ducked if they were under fire, they became afraid if their comrades died, they had a chance to suddenly go from a total moral breakdown to heroic morale. All-around realism (including graphics, sounds and soldier actions), a game scale small enough to be able to watch the actions of a single soldier and a good morale simulation did the trick.

The other way I would have the player care for his troops is through gameplay. I wouldn''t want him to care for _all_ the troops. A small core of hard to replace elite and battle-hardened units receive a lot of attention. Anything that sets a unit apart from the other units (commanders, heroes/aces, special abilities gained through combat, a history of battles the unit fought and commendations it received, frag count) make it a lot easier for the player to become attached to a unit. All of these were (successfully) applied in Panzer General.

One simple way to add a bit of emotion is with clever use of sound effects.

In most RTS games, the units'' sound effects are limited to a selection of acknowledgement noises which, while they can add personality to a unit type, don''t really create any tension.

I was thinking of using sound clips in a slightly different way. Sure, there would be some acknowledgement clips, but in most cases a simple ''yes sir'' would probably suffice. I''d go for more event clips for different situations. For example, when a unit comes under heavy fire, you''d get a suitably panicked radio message, possibly cut off by static when the unit finally gets wasted. A unit on breaking point might report back with hysterical shouting. You get the idea.

Military officers who lead soldiers into battle and bring the majority back after hardship should create high morale among their soldiers, making them something you''d want to keep around. Think of a bond developing between the soldiers and the officers that is not much unlike the horse/rider bond I proposed with regard to horse riding.

I don''t think the player would want to lose the power of that bond which creates a more effective fighting unit.

So, you have a battalion composed of soldiers and officers. You send them off to battle, and the bond builds between the officers and the soldiers. As a player, your best bet is to not transfer the soldiers to serve under a different set of officers, as this requires rebuilding bonds.

Maybe the fact that units in stratagy games are highly expendable and generaly unlimited you could try doing it so your squad or army has game long characters, so you could add a bit of depth to them, personalitys can change across levels due to the game story and then any cut scenes can be used to get to know your people.