Do 3d. I did an RTS in 2d and its a nightmare with memory bandwidth issues and especially with older comps with PCI cards, and the resulting spam on the system bus. I've also worked on a 3d RTS.

By the time you get it out, 3d will be standardized enough around dx8 that you should be in mostly good shape. Of course, you wont have the pci cards, but trust me, theres still big issues with 2d. That and youll be using a gazillion 3d features anyway for any cool effects at all, which means you may as well use 3d for the rest of the stuff anyway.

Plus, data management is more irritating with 2d than 3d. Setting centers and important points for things is far more time consuming in 2d than 3d.

I dont understand why you are limiting yousrelf to 200 polys a unit though for a game that wont be out for another 1.5 years. Unless of course your intending for 2353253532 units to be on the screen at a given time.

I still believe in an insometric view though -- free camera just doesnt work that great in general. It can work, but its rough unless constrained really well. And maybe not the best thing for rts where the action is not centered on your view but on the edge of your view. Something like war3s iso view is ideal.

Tom


Edited by - Zileas on January 30, 2002 10:33:24 PM

Where did you get that number of units? At 200 polygons per unit, that would be 47,065,070,000 polygons. My GeForce2 sure as hell cant do that, fully lit and textured. No card I know of can. What is that, 47 billion?