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Dec 26, 2011 6:07:04 GMT -8
Post by Farseli on Dec 26, 2011 6:07:04 GMT -8
Awww the Selkis is so cute! OH right, the game. Looking better all the time! Been playing a lot of battletech with a friend of mine and I'm sure I'd get people playing this if it got created.
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Dec 26, 2011 20:30:34 GMT -8
Post by Gravedust on Dec 26, 2011 20:30:34 GMT -8
Wow, yeah this is definitely truckin' Looks great so far!
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Dec 28, 2011 18:20:20 GMT -8
Post by Kirenski on Dec 28, 2011 18:20:20 GMT -8
Oh man, that is starting to look quite nice, keep up the good work
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Balk
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Jan 11, 2012 21:04:28 GMT -8
Post by Balk on Jan 11, 2012 21:04:28 GMT -8
And after a week+ of nothing due to holiday laziness, progress has been made. There is now more to the interface: The arrow buttons on the left and right edges of the window are used to change the view of the map around (for example, click the right arrow and the view shifts one tile to the east). The E button is used to end turn and pass control to the other team. The white box at the bottom of the screen is used for system messages and showing the results of actions. Arrow buttons next to it will scroll up/down through the messages. Movement code is pretty much done. When you pick a space within the pod's movement range, the game finds a path to that space. If you're ok with that path, you click the Confirm button or the tile at the end of the path. ...of course, if you take that generated path, you run right into a minefield. (Support has also been added for terrain effects!) A better idea is to click the New button, which lets you build your own path using the arrow keys. Like pretty much every tactical RPG ever. Falling damage has also been added. Here, Red 2 demonstrates by throwing himself off a 3-height cliff. Repeat a few times, and... Oops. Anyway, I don't know what the formula for falling damage is supposed to be, so I'm using [Damage = (Fall Height * 100) - Pod Size] for now. So a size 163 Achilles falling 2 Z-levels takes 37 damage. Grave, if you've got the actual formula lying around, let me know and I'll swap it in. I still have a bug or two to fix in the pathfinding code, hence the "pretty much done" above. It makes strange paths sometimes when pods are right next to cliffs. After that, I'll probably add jumping (should be easy now that moving is done) and then move on to the shooting.
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Jan 11, 2012 23:37:11 GMT -8
Post by Gravedust on Jan 11, 2012 23:37:11 GMT -8
I will respond to this more fully when I have time, since I really need to get to bed.
However, in short:
AWESOME!!!!!!!!! ;D
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keiya
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PC Game
Jan 12, 2012 14:52:44 GMT -8
Post by keiya on Jan 12, 2012 14:52:44 GMT -8
I still have a bug or two to fix in the pathfinding code, hence the "pretty much done" above. It makes strange paths sometimes when pods are right next to cliffs. After that, I'll probably add jumping (should be easy now that moving is done) and then move on to the shooting. This actually brings up a question: Does jumping over minefields work? Hidden ones it almost certainly does, but do they trigger the hardened ones you can see on the map? (I should probably post this somewhere more likely to be seen...)
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Jan 12, 2012 18:13:19 GMT -8
Post by Gravedust on Jan 12, 2012 18:13:19 GMT -8
This actually brings up a question: Does jumping over minefields work? Hidden ones it almost certainly does, but do they trigger the hardened ones you can see on the map? (I should probably post this somewhere more likely to be seen...) Nah they only hop up about 10/15 feet, plus they're activated by weight and/or ground vibration, so as long as you aren't on the ground you're alright, pretty much. Anyway... Game stuff.. Sorry it took so long to get back, very busy day. -_- Fall damage is basically [[Size/10] x [#height levels fallen]] Note that you have to drop at least 2 to count as a fall, so for instance a Size 120 pod that drops from height 3 to height 1 will be taking 24 damage. The movement system is looking great though, as does the combat log! Have you given any thought to the UI beyond what we've seen already? Once things get finalized I'd be more than happy to make some images for the background and unit plates and anything else. Also, I was wondering what our options are in terms of animation. If necessary I can get you segmented unit icons so we can do things like animated feet for walking cycles and such. Anyway. I guess what I most want to know is what you're capable of / willing to code into this, so I can make my suggestions and/or offers of help a little more intelligently. But yeah, really supremely excited about how things are going thus far!
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Balk
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Jan 12, 2012 21:13:04 GMT -8
Post by Balk on Jan 12, 2012 21:13:04 GMT -8
Fall damage is basically [[Size/10] x [#height levels fallen]] Cool, got that in there now. Have you given any thought to the UI beyond what we've seen already? Once things get finalized I'd be more than happy to make some images for the background and unit plates and anything else. I've been trying to crank stuff out as fast as I can, so what you see is basically the first idea I had that seemed halfway decent. I've considered re-working a few things a bit. - Push the map farther toward the right edge of the window and lay out the map-moving buttons in a compass shape on the left edge. Kinda like this: .^. <.> .v.
- Find room to display the X,Y coordinates of whatever square you have the cursor over. - Instead of using draggable pop-up windows to show pod status and orders menus, make the map about 10 tiles thinner and use the extra space for the status display and menus. So the status window would always be over there, it would show the pod you clicked last, and menus would appear below it as needed. (Not sold on this one - I don't think the pop-ups are that big of a hassle, and I like the wide view of the map) - I may need to do something with the faction name and pod icons at the top of the screen... not sure what yet. I think I have enough room for 4 factions with decent sized names and 10 pods per faction. So it should be ok, but there's something about it that bugs me. - If I think of another action that needs its own button (calling down an orbital strike?), I'd probably put it on the left edge of the screen, under the end turn button. But like I said, I haven't done a whole lot of UI planning. I've been more focused on getting stuff working than worrying about how it looks. So I'm ok with the UI layout as it is now, but I'm all ears if you or anyone else out there thinks that a different approach would work better. A nicer background than my gray-and-black picture frame would be great, as would better menus and buttons. I don't think you need to redo the pod status window, at least not right away. I stole the current image from the thread and I think it looks pretty good, plus there's a lot of separate pieces I need to draw on top of the basic window (energy bars, pod/pilot images, stats, weapon images, etc.). It could definitely use a nicer font though. Also, I was wondering what our options are in terms of animation. If necessary I can get you segmented unit icons so we can do things like animated feet for walking cycles and such. I've never tried 3D animation, but I can do 2D animation with sprites. And this is a 2D project, so we're covered. Pods walking, artillery exploding, railgun slugs flying around... all doable. Animation is one of the last things I planned on doing, though. Can't really animate the actions if you can't make 'em happen yet. Images that I can use in a sprite sheet would be very helpful for that part. If you make walking pod sprites, you don't need to bother making them in any color but white. I can tint them the appropriate color on my end. And the tiles on my map are 28px by 28px, if that'll help you scale 'em. Anyway. I guess what I most want to know is what you're capable of / willing to code into this, so I can make my suggestions and/or offers of help a little more intelligently. Mmmm... "what can you do" is a hard one to answer. I'm very much an amateur at game programming, although I did take a course or two about it in college and I work as a programmer (not of video games), if that helps you gauge my abilities. I'm positive I can implement all the rules for playing the game, I can wrap them in a UI that gets the job done (click buttons on the screen and hit keys on the keyboard to do stuff!), and I can do sprite animation for some added flash. (Moving units, firing weapons, and that sort of thing. Those close-up battle scenes that you see in Fire Emblem or Advance Wars games would be more trouble than they're worth for me.) As for what I'm willing to do, I definitely want to have a mode for 2 or more players to fight with a bunch of pods - the kind of stuff I've been posting screenshots of in here. Having the AI control pods is probably out of the question, unless I get some help figuring out how it'll make decisions. A mode to build new pods and maps for use in the game would also be nice to have, although I may take the lazy way out and just have the program read buildsheets from a .txt file or something. But if you've got a suggestion, fire away. If I don't think I can do it or if it sounds like more work than I wanna do, I'll say so. Whew... this is getting long. TLDR version: my plan is flexible, getting stuff working takes priority over making it look pretty, and I will listen to all comments/suggestions.
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Jan 13, 2012 11:14:09 GMT -8
Post by Gravedust on Jan 13, 2012 11:14:09 GMT -8
Roger dodger, I just wanted to know what your basic parameters of doability are. I'm a graphic designer by trade and I get people asking me to do the impossible all the time simply because they don't know whats feasible and what isn't. Anyway.. If can give me the dimensions you're working with I can mock up a rough UI in illustrator. Some things I think might be useful additions (most of which I'm sure fall into the ("I already thought of it, just haven't got around to doing it' category. ) ---- An RTS-style minimap (click on a portion of the minimap to look at that area on the main screen) or A Google-maps style zoom in/out function. (I.e click to focus on a section of the battlefield near where you clicked, click again to back the view out to show the whole field. This would obviate the need for a minimal to be taking up part of the UI, probably. (also potentially buttons for panning controls) ---- I'd like to see the Overall Pod display section (the area up at the top with the SHZ/SA pods) display small bars with (Shield/Armor/Energy/Sig) levels so you can see a squad's overall status at a glance. Clicking on one of the units displayed there focuses on the unit on the main map, blah blah blah as in every game ever. (actually I think it does that already..) ----- Full pod status sheet on mouseover/click sounds great, though we probably need to take care that the sheet doesn't cover up things people might want to see, somehow. ----- Some thoughts on map editing/creation: An alternative to an in-program map editor may be to include the ability to load an image as the map background and have the program itself draw the squares of the battlefield. The squares can then be marked for cover/terrain height and danger zones by the users to go along with whatever terrain the image presents.. (and then all that info is saved to become the map) So for instance you could take a top-down photo of your desk at work, (make sure you out some stuff around for terrain. ) load it up in the 'map editor' as the background, mark all the squares appropriately, and then have pods fight on that. Or they can use an image-editing program or whatever. I would of course make a bunch of my illustrator-style maps to go with things too if people don't feel like making their own. Actually this seems to be how you're handling things already pretty much. The grid size may have to be adjustable in order to make it work cleanly for imported random images though. ----- Some thoughts on pod creation: I'd love to see that workable in-engine. I've been noodling how we can accommodate Portrait (for the status sheet) and top-down(for the map) images of all the different creatable pod designs. I think if we use a combination of layered sprites we can do it that way. For instance, on the top-down Layer 1-4: Sprites for the pod's Weapons (based on what they added, sized up for bigger/more powerful guns) Layer 5: Jump Jets go here (If the pod has them, size/shape dictated by Jet Powah!!) Layer 6: The pod's main body (Size/shape dictated by armor value and pod size) Layer 7: The pod's legs (size/shape Based on the pod's Mobility) Or basically how I build them in illustrator before they're grouped. Walking animations can actually probably be done just by moving the leg sprites back and forth beneath the main body's sprite, and pod animation wouldn't require animation 'frames' at all, per se, most of it can probably be done just by rotating/moving the different sprites in relation to each other. The Portrait views of the pods will be a little more artistically complex but I think I can probably manage something that looks alright. Something like: (Rightmost weapon) (2nd rightmost weapon) (jumpjets (if any) (right leg) (pod main body) (Left leg) (dorsal weapon(s) (2nd leftmost weapon) (leftmost weapon) Likewise I would also like for players to be able to make pilot portraits in the same manner: (accessory) (Hair) (eyes) (nose) (mouth) (neck/shoulders/outfit) And have the different parts be selectable by the player, or just juggled at random. I actually did something like it in the past for steam armada using the same method. i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg297/AK9779/Generatortest.jpgThough I think the thick borders of the style I'm using for this game ought to make it look a lot better... Obviously I'd be providing all the art resources for all this. ---- Oh.. I'd also think it would be cool if there was a method by which you could play games back later (either round-by-round or continuously from beginning to end) to see pods walk around and blasting each other from mission beginning to mission end. Making these match recordings exportable would be neat too. Not superimportant, but I suggest it because I like stuff like that. ---- Anyway. I totally understand and agree without he fact that you're going for operability first and eye-candy later, and I agree with that absolutely. But I'm a huge fan of eye candy, and in the end result the flashier/zoomier we can make things the better, IMO. (This is why I spend hours arranging persistent explosion/shot markers all over my maps. >.< This mission's file takes 2 MINUTES to save on my older machine. ) So the more polish we can manage to put on this thing the happier I will be. I'm willing to go to great lengths to make a great-looking end result, so if you can figure out a way to code it, I'll do my damnedest to find a way to make it look pretty. Anyway.. So that's the stuff that would be on my wishlist as far as final features go, let me know what you think is workable or too much of a pain in the ass or what have you, and let me know what you need from me to help you with anything you're working on.
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Balk
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Jan 13, 2012 20:24:36 GMT -8
Post by Balk on Jan 13, 2012 20:24:36 GMT -8
Ooh, some good ideas. Let me go through 'em...
Minimap or zoom function:
I've been thinking of 30x30 maps as the standard size, and right now I've got room to show a 30x18 chunk of the map. So it never occurred to me that we'd need a minimap or zoom. I guess I'd want them for larger maps though...
Of the two, I'd rather do a minimap. It'll be easier to make another way to move the view of the map around than to change the view through zooming. The only issue is finding a place to put it. More UI stuff means less of the map visible at once.
Armor/energy/etc. bars in the pod display section:
I like that, and it wouldn't be hard to implement since I'm already doing it in the status window, except with larger bars. Just gotta figure out how big the new bars are going to be.
And for the record, clicking on those pod icons at the top of the screen will pop the pod's status window but will not focus the pod on screen. Wouldn't be hard to add that in, though.
Pod status sheet:
The sheet that pops up when you when you click on a pod is shown in the screenshots in the first post. It's big, but you can drag it anywhere you want. It could also be made transparent (while it's being dragged or all the time) so it doesn't cover stuff up.
And now that I think of it, I need to add something to stop people from dragging the window completely out of the game window into limbo. It's always the little things... >_<
Map editing:
What you described is pretty close to how it works now (minus the UI, of course). To build a map I use an image for the background, and 4 txt files that define elevation, cover, extra movement cost, and terrain effects for the map. None of them would be hard for the average person to make, either.
For the map editor I was going to have the player pick their own image to use as the background, and then use the interface to define elevation/cover/etc. for each square. Then it would automatically generate the txt files and you've got a map. To make things easy for myself, I think I'd only accept images where the width and height is a multiple of 28, or whatever the size of a map square winds up being.
Although if I start running out of steam, map editor is probably the first thing to get cut since the alternative isn't too horrible. Get an image, make a few txt files, throw 'em in a folder and then tell the game where the folder is. Done.
Pod/pilot image builder
Oh yes. I was gonna ask the player to upload new images for the pod portrait/map sprite or pick from the built-in ones, but this would be a lot cooler. I like the idea for walking animations too. What other animations were you thinking of doing that way? Shooting, jumping, melee attacks?
Game playback:
I was thinking of saving the complete combat log somewhere so you can go back and read through old games. I guess I could also save the orders in another log and add code to read 'em in and recreate the battle. So that's doable, but it would be something to put in towards the end.
Other stuff:
I'd say what I want most right now is assets for the UI. New border, new buttons, maybe a new orders menu. If you want to sketch out a new design with the features you requested (minimap and more detailed squad status) that would be awesome. The canvas is 900x675, and I'd like it if the space reserved for the map can use 28x28 px tiles. Aside from that, move stuff around however you want.
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Jan 14, 2012 12:52:13 GMT -8
Post by Gravedust on Jan 14, 2012 12:52:13 GMT -8
Very quick response, I've got a lot to do today...
I'll start fiddling around with the UI design given the dimensions you asked for. May not see anything until Monday or Tuesday however.
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Balk
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Jan 15, 2012 15:51:35 GMT -8
Post by Balk on Jan 15, 2012 15:51:35 GMT -8
Jumping is now possible. It works just like moving - click Jump from the menu, then click the spot where you want to go. No alternate paths here, since there's only one way to jump to each spot in your jumping range. I'm not going to have as much time to work on this in the coming weeks, on account of school starting up again on Tuesday. If I get back to this before Grave finishes the UI redesign, weapons will be added next, otherwise it'll be the new UI.
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Jan 15, 2012 18:54:18 GMT -8
Post by Gravedust on Jan 15, 2012 18:54:18 GMT -8
Hey, did you want tileable graphics or just a single image that takes up the space? Figure I'd ask before I got started...
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Balk
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Jan 15, 2012 20:51:10 GMT -8
Post by Balk on Jan 15, 2012 20:51:10 GMT -8
Tileable graphics are better, I can always glue them together into a single image if I need to.
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Jan 15, 2012 22:19:34 GMT -8
Post by Gravedust on Jan 15, 2012 22:19:34 GMT -8
Cool. I've done webpages in zee past so I can tile pretty good. (^.^)b
Oh.. While I'm on with the random questioning: Sound y/n? Obviously something to worry about later if so.
You were asking about animation earlier.. Here's what I was thinking Might be nescessary:
-Walking Mostly just swishing the foot sprites around under the main body)
-Jumping Really nothing too spectacular, maybe the legs would go back a bit when they take off and splay out a little on landing. Maybe since they'll be jumping up 'towards' the camera they could grow a little, false-perspective style. Would like to see jet exhaust and stuff like that.
-Shooting (direct fire) Weapon sprites could turn/aim independently of the facing of the pod, possibly? I'd love to see little details like exhaust after energy shots or ejected shell casings.
-Launching (Indirect) I guess animated missiles/ rockets, what have you, little smoke trails or whatever as details. I am insane enough to want to animate things like opening/closing hatch covers as well.
-Hack Not much to this one. Maybe just a glowing alternate sprite for hacking decks.
-Hit Maybe just a little knockback/flinch whenever one gets popped with a weapon.
-Explode Pretty much what you would imagine.. Would like it if it could leave a little wreck behind. Maybe just the core sphere with a crater in it, though I could see doing 'destroyed' alternate sprites for weapons and other accessories.
-Idle Not sure what this could be, just probably a little movement to make them more 'alive'.. you know.. for machines, anyway.
ALSO:
I don't remember if this was ever mentioned at all, (or maybe it's this way already) but rather than doing each pod's turn individually, watching the results of it's actions, then doing the next pod, I think it's important (for added strategery) that the player issues orders for -all- their pods then hits a 'go' button to put them all into action at once, essentially how it happens on the forums currently.
...Subject to whether it's a ridiculous pain in the ass. >.>
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Jan 16, 2012 3:14:30 GMT -8
Post by Kirenski on Jan 16, 2012 3:14:30 GMT -8
This is starting to look even better guys, keep up the good work!
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Balk
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Jan 16, 2012 16:37:51 GMT -8
Post by Balk on Jan 16, 2012 16:37:51 GMT -8
Sound is a yes. Most of the animation stuff sounds good, but I'm not sure you'd ever see laser exhaust or shell casings, since the grid squares aren't very big. Weapon sprites could turn, I suppose, although I'd expect the shot to be in the direction the pod is facing anyway. I don't think we're going to get as detailed as missile hatch covers opening. Pod orders are issued individually, and I'd rather keep it that way. I can understand why you'd want to collect a list of orders before doing anything in a forum game, but I don't think it would work well in a one-on-one game where each player controls a bunch of pods. ...plus it would be a pain to go back and put it in.
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Jan 16, 2012 21:56:32 GMT -8
Post by slightlyrandom on Jan 16, 2012 21:56:32 GMT -8
Ooh, but simultaneous movement would be awesome, AND add tactical pressure. Got enough guns on that one guy to kill him? It's 85% certain, but it'd REALLY suck if he stayed up! Fuck, better make this guy shoot him, too.
As opposed to shooting him with guys until he's dead, then making the rest go somewhere else.
Not to mention finalizing the orders, pressing go, kicking back and enjoying the show.
Do it!
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Jan 17, 2012 10:40:47 GMT -8
Post by Gravedust on Jan 17, 2012 10:40:47 GMT -8
Yearp, that's what I had in mind. But it's Balk who's generously donating his time and effort so if it's a PITA then that's fine so far as I'm concerned... The Move, shoot, next guy, format is identical to how B-pod would be played on a tabletop anyway, and it shouldn't wreck things if simultaneous turns are left out. In other news, I'm.. probably not going to get to the UI today, I really need to get the turn out, and there's a ton of backlogged other stuff I need to tend to. it is still a high priority though, I'll try and keep you updates as to when I can possibly have it done.
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Balk
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Jan 20, 2012 16:30:32 GMT -8
Post by Balk on Jan 20, 2012 16:30:32 GMT -8
Yeah, no rush on that. I haven't been able to get anything new done myself on account of school chewing up my free time. So here's something from the blooper reel instead. This happened while I was working on the movement path code. Above, we have Blue 1 at position 15, 14. I want to move it 1 space west to 14, 14. The path from its current position to its destination should be simple to find, right? Sure, if things hadn't gotten mixed up somewhere. The code that was supposed to find the shortest path wound up finding an incredibly convoluted path instead: It sidestepped south into the minefield, went back north again, moved 1 space east to build up a running start, and then burned its last 2 movement points getting to the target. >_< ...I blame this bug on the transmitters at Ebon Mesa.
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Jan 20, 2012 18:27:42 GMT -8
Post by Gravedust on Jan 20, 2012 18:27:42 GMT -8
Hehehe.. Good times, good times. Yeah this week was so busy that really the only thing I was able to get done artistically was to finish coloring the Dr.O portrait and even that I had to rush. (When I finish everything else I wanted to do any given day, then I get to draw. =P) Hopefully next week will be a little better.
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Balk
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Feb 3, 2012 22:32:40 GMT -8
Post by Balk on Feb 3, 2012 22:32:40 GMT -8
And 2 weeks later, weapons systems are online. Well, energy weapons at least. Click that WEAPON button from the orders menu, and a new window pops up with the pod's weapons: Click a weapon and its range will be highlighted so you can pick a target. The red squares show the normal range. Because I'm shooting a laser, I can hit things beyond the normal range, but with lower damage the farther away the target is. Those are the yellow squares: I know it looks like I'm ignoring LOS rules and can shoot through that 3-height hill in the southeast, but that's just because I was lazy and never put in the real elevation for that part of the map. As far as the program is concerned, that's flat ground and totally okay to shoot over. Anyway, let me try to hit Red 1 there... Whoops. The range may look impressive, but my test pilot has 0 accuracy. That means 32% chance to hit from his current position, and forget about anything farther away. Let's get closer: (You'll notice I now have LOS on Red 2 in the south as well.) Got him! ;D ...of course, if this were a real game he'd run behind me and carve me up next turn, but whatever. Now that energy weapons are working, railguns, cannons, and missiles will be easy to put in, but I'm gonna wait and see how the rules change before I do anything with hacking or artillery.
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Feb 5, 2012 11:23:13 GMT -8
Post by Gravedust on Feb 5, 2012 11:23:13 GMT -8
Well hot damn, looks like it's really coming along! I'm sorry I haven't really made any progress at all on the GUI stuff, right at the moment I'm not really sure when I'm gonna get the chance to... But hopefully you can truck along a while more before you really need that stuff... Otherwise it's looking really great so far.
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Balk
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Feb 11, 2012 22:35:48 GMT -8
Post by Balk on Feb 11, 2012 22:35:48 GMT -8
Minor update this week. Crunching the numbers on all the moves you can make is a bit of a pain, so I figured this game could use a Fire Emblem-style "confirm your attack" window that shows some of the stats for the action you're about to take. That laser icon doesn't look nearly as good there as I thought it would. I'll have to shrink it or put a border around it or something, but it'll do for now. I'm planning to show the stat block above for attacks with energy weapons, railguns, cannons, and missiles. For melee I probably don't need to bother showing the target's shields, and I think I'll show the range of damage the attack can do (like 0-120) instead of a single number. For hacking I guess all I need to show is the selected hack and odds of success. Does this layout seem ok to you guys? Tell me if I left something out or if I should tweak anything to make it more clear... it's late enough that I could be overlooking an obvious way to make this better.
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Feb 13, 2012 13:49:10 GMT -8
Post by Gravedust on Feb 13, 2012 13:49:10 GMT -8
Hey hey. Yeah, if the computer can figure out the %hit and display it that'd be really helpful, obviously. Hopefully it can display it on something like a mousoever or whatever so you can hover on different units and see what you can do to who. And yeah the weapon icons may not really look great in a setting other than the one they were designed for. I think I'm actually getting rid of the icons on the unit card so the text can be a little larger, but they can stay in for the compy version. A sliding scale for melee would probably be nice, though the damage number may stop being variable in the future, we'll have to see. Anyway… All said and done it looks good to me, I'm sure the info could be compressed a little more but overall the concept looks great! I'm sorry I haven't been able to help much with anything recently.. I've been pretty busy and I'm not quite sure when that'll change. :/ But hopefully sometime before I die I'll get to be able to work on the fun stuff for this…
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Balk
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Feb 19, 2012 17:53:56 GMT -8
Post by Balk on Feb 19, 2012 17:53:56 GMT -8
Showing the info on mouseover is a good idea... less annoying than clicking through a confirm window. But before I do that, I feel like re-styling a few things to match those sharp new pod cards. Hey look, it's a recolored Reaper Hoplite!
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Feb 20, 2012 13:49:07 GMT -8
Post by Gravedust on Feb 20, 2012 13:49:07 GMT -8
Keeeeen, looks pretty good. Hope you're still having fun fiddling around with all this.
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Balk
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Feb 26, 2012 19:35:38 GMT -8
Post by Balk on Feb 26, 2012 19:35:38 GMT -8
Still having fun fiddling with it, yes. Although an avalanche of papers is keeping me from getting a whole lot done... oh well, give it a couple more weeks and the workload may lighten up. Also, I'm not sure how much further I want to go without knowing what's going to change gameplay wise in the new version. Changes to the podbuilding system don't really matter to this project right now, but I'd like to know how the gameplay will change sooner rather than later. I'd hate to finish putting in the mechanics for, say, artillery only to find that the new rules are completely different. (That happens at work often enough.) Minor changes to formulas and stuff are no big deal, I just don't want to have to rip out huge blocks of code and start over. Speaking of artillery, I saw that you modified your rules post so artillery has a difficulty roll. It doesn't say what happens if you fail the roll, though. Does the target square change? If so, how is the new target determined? I know you don't want to clog up the SA thread with a giant list of rules, but it would be handy if we had a post on this board with the complete game mechanics. Just so I have something to refer to as I work on this. Anyway... lately I've been restyling the windows to match the new pod cards, and putting in show-info-on-mouseover feature. To help me test it out, I put in an Arclite! ;D Let's select an action... Choose a weapon... (Haven't added code for artillery yet, just missiles) And pick a target. Mousing over a valid target will make the attack stats appear in the message area at the bottom of the screen. Blue 1 has some sig built up since I had him jump around to get in this shot, so he's the easier target. Shooting at him... ...has predictable results. Sorry, missile fans.
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PC Game
Feb 28, 2012 15:35:43 GMT -8
Post by Gravedust on Feb 28, 2012 15:35:43 GMT -8
Blargh. Sorry, I just now actually noticed there'd been a response here. I have been literally too busy for the last couple of weeks. As in I'm giving myself health problems trying to get all the shit I need to get done done. =P I need to slow down. Nice min/max with 99 sensors and 1 eva. Shoulda put it into Hack though. If you fail an arty roll it goes to a scatter table, D100 as usual, Distance of Offset is [D100/25] ((Rounded up)) For my own purposes I was gonna do direction Numpad style, I.e: 7 8 9 4 5 6 1 2 3 Roll d100 and only use the 10's place. (pretend it's a D10) 5 and 10 are Roll Again, though I'd like to think up something clever for both. In an old game I had, the penalty for a snake-eyes on an artillery roll was "It lands wherever your opponent wants it to' which was fun. Though I wouldn't do that here. I'd have to cook up something nicer overall for tabletop. Anyway. The game's actual mechanics are unlikely to change very much, the different rolls will probably be staying the same, more or less. Melee might be changing a little but I don't see any of the other ones changing too much.
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PC Game
Feb 29, 2012 5:59:21 GMT -8
Post by captainfoo on Feb 29, 2012 5:59:21 GMT -8
That being said, it's probably a good idea to build the rules file as externally as possible so it's easy to change!
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