War Machine WIP

Post by **CPT Worm** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 4:10 pm

This little game I've been working on has been an idea in my head for the past 4 years now.

Previously started as somewhat of an inside joke as "The Great Gamehippoian Civil War," many mock-ups were produced. I even made a soundtrack to go along with it.

Well, as I was a college student the past four years, I really never had too much time to devote to learning a new programming language. However, a couple years back, someone clued me onto the SDL API; it used C++ as its based, and since I had taken a computer programming class in high school, it was a bit easier to pick this up.

However, after trying to produce a Sonic game (and beating my head against the wall), I kind of gave up on it.
Look here: http://www.dosgames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8755 (dated 22 November 2006 lol)

But now, since I'm unemployed and chillin' back home, I decided to pick it up again.

So, allow me to introduce "War Machine."
It's a turn-based military tactics game.
I'm using Famicom Wars (the NES version of Advance Wars) as my base, and while I'm not trying to simply make a clone, I want to mimic this game and make improvements and changes later.

It's not much to look at right now, but I got it to compile, which is a victory in itself.
Right now, it displays the title screen and plays the theme. If you click, the screen will transition, and display the test map. This map is generated by blitting a chipset, so I'm not cheating by drawing the map in Paint and displaying it. (Not that the map is much to look at)

Main screen:
<a href="http://content.screencast.com/users/mis ... .png"><img class="embeddedObject" src="http://content.screencast.com/users/mis ... 2title.png" width="800" height="522" border="0"></a>

The test map:
<a href="http://content.screencast.com/users/mis ... .png"><img class="embeddedObject" src="http://content.screencast.com/users/mis ... v0-0-3.png" width="512" height="470" border="0"></a>

A little movie

Post by **Larry Laffer** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 4:47 pm

Nice!

Is the video supposed to be sans sound? Or did I break something?

Also, with my eye I spy a misalignment of the bottom-center road turn tiles.

And no Advance Wars clone worth its salt should ever go without CO and their powers(not that it matters this early in the release life cycle, just sayin')

Post by **CPT Worm** » Tue Sep 15, 2009 5:45 pm

Larry Laffer wrote:Nice!

Is the video supposed to be sans sound? Or did I break something?

Also, with my eye I spy a misalignment of the bottom-center road turn tiles.

And no Advance Wars clone worth its salt should ever go without CO and their powers(not that it matters this early in the release life cycle, just sayin')

Yeah, I muted the sound because the recorder used the mic instead of line-out. And my fans get loud when I do anything, really.

Here are the tracks that should be playing:
Civil Unrest (Main Theme)
Western Campaign (Player 1's theme)

And, you're right about the road. They worked when they were 16 x 16, but the interpolation that GIMP uses screwed it when I doubled the size. Those are temporary anyway.

Post by **Larry Laffer** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 2:51 am

Cool tunes! Are they original? Or did you take them from other games? 'Cause I find Western Campaign to be rather familiar...

Post by **CPT Worm** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 9:31 am

Larry Laffer wrote:Cool tunes! Are they original? Or did you take them from other games? 'Cause I find Western Campaign to be rather familiar...

I "composed" them from loops in Garageband. What does it remind you of?

Post by **dosraider** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 9:53 am

Looks promising .......

Post by **Larry Laffer** » Wed Sep 16, 2009 1:42 pm

2LT Worm wrote:
Larry Laffer wrote:Cool tunes! Are they original? Or did you take them from other games? 'Cause I find Western Campaign to be rather familiar...
I "composed" them from loops in Garageband. What does it remind you of?

I dunno, some RPG on one of the older gen consoles, but I can't put my finger on it. *shrugs* Could be just my imagination.

Like them(the tunes that is) tho'.

Post by **CPT Worm** » Thu Sep 24, 2009 8:19 pm

New video
Basically, this new video shows cursor action, which actually took some time to code (getting the application to give me the coordinates of the mouse on the window took a couple of hours. sigh)!

You can't see it, but I've also start programing the game's logic. So hopefully within the next couple of releases, you can click on a grid square, and information will pop up on the screen.

Also, I'm planning on getting rid of these side bars. I decided that I didn't like 'em.

If you have a Mac, try it out and tell me if it works okay.
http://gamehipporedux.com/warmachine/do ... e0.0.6.zip

EDIT:
If you DO NOT have the SDL_image, SDL_ttf, SDL_mixer, Ogg, and Vorbis frameworks in your ~/Library/Frameworks, you need to download this version:
http://gamehipporedux.com/warmachine/do ... 0.0.6b.zip

Post by **CPT Worm** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 5:23 pm

BUMP

Here are some copies of the program. There's not much here...I'm mostly seeing if they work on other computers!!
Barring any problems found in the testing, I should be ready to proceed to ver. 0.1.0!

You'll notice some differences from this product and the screens above (unless of course, you've been reading the dev blog...)

Ver. 0.0.9 Mac

Ver. 0.0.9 Windows

Please let me know if it works for you or not!

Post by **dosraider** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 5:52 pm

It works.
Congrats.

OMG IT'S ALIVE !!!!!!

.... But not much to do yet ingame, isn't it....?

Hint hint: shouldn't you make the playfield a bit bigger?

Post by **CPT Worm** » Sun Sep 27, 2009 8:02 pm

dosraider wrote:Hint hint: shouldn't you make the playfield a bit bigger?

What do you mean?
I could make the tiles bigger I suppose, but that be farther along in the dev cycle.

Post by **dosraider** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 12:52 am

Not the tiles bigger but moar tiles .... it's now 14x14, that's seems a bit restricted IMO.

Post by **Larry Laffer** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 3:34 am

Works fine on my XP SP2.

<strike>
But... always the nitpicker: Shouldn't the menu that activates when you click on your <strike>worm</strike> general deactivate when you click on anything else? Cause currently it stays there 'till you click it again.

</strike>

Edit: Disregard that: reading the blog, I found it it's a feature, not a bug.

Post by **dosraider** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 4:18 am

Tested on:
XP sp3
Vista sp2
All OK.

Post by **CPT Worm** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 9:52 am

Larry Laffer wrote:Works fine on my XP SP2.

<strike>
But... always the nitpicker: Shouldn't the menu that activates when you click on your <strike>worm</strike> general deactivate when you click on anything else? Cause currently it stays there 'till you click it again. </strike>

Edit: Disregard that: reading the blog, I found it it's a feature, not a bug.

Yeah, I figured that the right click would be the cancel button. If you right click outside that area it will close.
But, I will write in down in my feedback notes. You might get that later! =P

Post by **Dogbreath** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 12:47 pm

Works fine on my computer. (XP sp2)

Nothing more to suggest until I see what the actual gameplay is like. (I'm assuming you're doing levels? or just this one map?)

Post by **CPT Worm** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 2:05 pm

Dogbreath wrote:Works fine on my computer. (XP sp2)

Nothing more to suggest until I see what the actual gameplay is like. (I'm assuming you're doing levels? or just this one map?)

For right now, it's just the test map.
They will be more maps...just a bit later.

But thanks, I'm just glad that it's building and working. I should get down to making some magic happen here in the next day or so.

Post by **Larry Laffer** » Mon Sep 28, 2009 2:33 pm

2LT Worm wrote:They will be more maps...just a bit later.

Unless the map layouts themselves are copyright to Intelligent Systems(are they? I don't know!), duping the maps from the various Advance Wars games shouldn't be too hard.

Post by **CPT Worm** » Tue Oct 06, 2009 11:26 pm

Well, a new release should be coming this weekend or early next week.

Here's what I've been working on since the last release.

In this shot, we see that 1) units can be created, 2) they can be moved, and 3) the range of movement of a selected unit. However, let me say that the algorithm I have now doesn't really work if the range is over 6, and it doesn't take into account mountains and forests. I will be working to fix this before I move onto version 0.2.0.

The economy is in full effect. You're given a starting budget of $15,000. For each captured city, your HQ, and the barracks, you receive $1000 at the beginning of your turn. Each units costs a certain amount of money. If you have enough, you can deploy the unit, and your funds will decrease. If you cannot afford a unit, you cannot deploy it, as seen below.

Of course, I'm not sure if unit prices are going to be set or map dependent. So, prices are not displayed on the above screen (currently). Also, I plan on animating the units on the Deploy Units menu, but this business with movement has tired me, so I'm pushing that off to a day or two from now.

Post by **CPT Worm** » Tue Oct 13, 2009 12:00 am

Version 0.1.9

Select your poison!

Windows

Mac

Linux

The game functions correctly...as far as it knows. However, the engine is not perfect, so you will probably find errors. And I want to know what they are so I can fix 'em!

So please, let me know what you find!
And soon, ver. 0.2.0...that's when shit gets real.

Wow, Windows really makes it darker.