Check out my hobby project!

[Margalis]

So, I have some time off of work and after that I am probably going to be out of work for a while, so I figured why not work on some hobby project?

I set up a (very crappy looking) web page that describes the project with a couple screenshots. I have only started in earnest a couple of days ago, am making pretty good progress right now.

If people are interested I could talk about the design a bit and answer questions. At some point I might look for people to test, but that wouldn't be for a while.

The url is:
www.geocities.com/margalisix

Yes, geocities!

[WindupAtheist]

Needs more b00bies.  And fetuspults.

[Samwise]

How far have you gotten in figuring out all those units and how they're going to play together?  It sounds like balancing is going to be a very large chunk of design work.

[Margalis]

Not very far. First, I have to get the basic combat is reasonable shape. Then I need to make the whole army creation framework. (Which for the time being will give you access to any number of any units) Then as I add units I have to add support for whatever special abilities they might have.

Before I start adding units I have to make some notes to myself about what the various colors are good at, about the typical stat ranges vs. cost, etc. For example is 40 attack power and 10 defense pretty good for a cost 25 creature? It's impossible to say, it's all relative.

The way I'll approach that is to create some instructive examples. For instance, a Wizard will die in 2 hits to a beefy fighter type, and maybe one hit for a feeble wizard and a really powerful attacker. Ninja will die in say 3 hits to a beefy fighter but will dodge a fair amount. That sort of thing. I will start with some bland, bread and butter type of units to get the general feel down. The slow, strong guy, the fast guy who can take out soft targets, the wizard, the archer, etc.

Edit: It's worth mentioning that tweaking units and adding new ones is really easy. I wrote a little utility program that strips out the image from a magic card and to create a new unit you just have to stick an XML file in the right place. The only thing that is a bit time consuming is making the map marker, which just involves cropping and scaling. So once the army formation screens are roughed out I can pump out test units really fast. It also means that if other people want to play with it when it's ready they can also create and tweak units really easily. Of course adding new special abilities takes some programming. I have to see how that goes, it might be easier to create a complex description of the ability based on tons of keywords, triggers, conditionals, etc.

[Margalis]

I'll do a large update of my site on Monday when I get back from a wedding. I've done a lot of refactoring lately so I can start adding a pretty large variety of types of attacks and movements - projectile attacks with min and max ranges, attacks that can hit multiple times (counter-counter-attacks), guys that can hop up to high places and guys that can't, etc. I've also been playing around with some numbers a lot to try to get a feel for what some baseline sets of stats should be.

[Strazos]

You win if you can work in some multiplayer action.

FFT + Multiplayer = Orgasmic Luv

Seriously.

[Stephen Zepp]

Not very far. First, I have to get the basic combat is reasonable shape. Then I need to make the whole army creation framework. (Which for the time being will give you access to any number of any units) Then as I add units I have to add support for whatever special abilities they might have.

Before I start adding units I have to make some notes to myself about what the various colors are good at, about the typical stat ranges vs. cost, etc. For example is 40 attack power and 10 defense pretty good for a cost 25 creature? It's impossible to say, it's all relative.

The way I'll approach that is to create some instructive examples. For instance, a Wizard will die in 2 hits to a beefy fighter type, and maybe one hit for a feeble wizard and a really powerful attacker. Ninja will die in say 3 hits to a beefy fighter but will dodge a fair amount. That sort of thing. I will start with some bland, bread and butter type of units to get the general feel down. The slow, strong guy, the fast guy who can take out soft targets, the wizard, the archer, etc.

Edit: It's worth mentioning that tweaking units and adding new ones is really easy. I wrote a little utility program that strips out the image from a magic card and to create a new unit you just have to stick an XML file in the right place. The only thing that is a bit time consuming is making the map marker, which just involves cropping and scaling. So once the army formation screens are roughed out I can pump out test units really fast. It also means that if other people want to play with it when it's ready they can also create and tweak units really easily. Of course adding new special abilities takes some programming. I have to see how that goes, it might be easier to create a complex description of the ability based on tons of keywords, triggers, conditionals, etc.

There is a really good article on unit balance and how to test/achieve (theory wise) in "Massively Multiplayer Game Development", Thor Alexander (editor), by Ben Hanson from Sony, and another by John Olsen from Microsoft in the same book. Might be worth picking up, it's pretty good.

[Margalis]

Thanks for the heads up, I will order that then. I hope to get a lot done this weekend, I've sort of gotten bogged down making a menu system but I should be done with that soon and go back to more fun stuff.

I had to make menus once I added the ability to have different attacks. For example archers have a weak short range knife attack and a bow attack. Before I just had keyboard shortcuts like 'A' to attack, 'E' to end turn, etc, but as I add more options that isn't really viable anymore. (Although there will still be keyboard shortcuts, so if you want to use a bow with an archer instead of going through a menu you can use 'B' or something)

[Hoax]

Are they fun little rpg menus?  Can we see them?  Is the text white and the box blue (it should be) and do they make cute little noises every time you switch between options or select anything?

Anywho, when your ready for unit balance testing I'd be happy to help   :-D

[Margalis]

They are blue with white text. No sound effects for anything yet. I'll have some shots up this weekend, that's pretty much all I'm doing today.

Edit: I updated my site. Some basic menus are now in. In the recent changes I also have an example of a character file for any computer nerds that want to take a look at it.

[Ward]

Nice project... seems very intriguing... (I like all the unit/character creation and balancing stuff)

[Strazos]

I know it's a bit early, but I want to see a Fencer class. Basically just a straight, in-you-face damage class, without all the tricks of a Rogue. Think a nasty knight without the plate armor.

I like me some goofy classes that Work.

[Margalis]

I made some changes to I can start to mass produce units. At this point what I want to do is start rounding out the special combat mechanics. For example, weapons with range that gain range from high ground, weapons like polearms that have range but don't reach longer on high ground, special abilities like regeneration, flying units, units that are more agile and can jump up/over things, etc, etc, etc.

So right now I'm looking for some mechanics I can start to implement. Off the top of my head I have:
Flying units.
Agile/hopping units. (Can jump up two spaces)
Units with arcing projectiles. (Gain range from high ground)
Units with straight projectiles/extra range.
Units that attack multiple times. (Something like attack, counter-attack, 2nd attack)
Regeneration (regain X% of your HP a turn)
Units that do extra damage against certain other types of units. (flying, humanoids, animals, colors, undead)
Various "auras" like "all units within 5 spaces of this unit get +5 accuracy" or "all zombies within 5 spaces get +10% regen"
Status change effects. (Make next turn come slower, lower defense, etc)
Attacks/spells that take special points. (Mana/rage points/whatever)

The way I'll approach this at first, in order to keep things straight, is to make Magic-equavalent classes. So I'll make horned troll have regen, and Serra Angel have flying, etc etc.

Lingo Alert:
I'm trying to make it all pluggable so adding a new abiltiy involves creating a new action class then instantiating it in the character file. That way it is easy to use add new abilities, movement filters, etc. The idea is that it will be easy to combine a bunch of effects and eventually adding a new aura is as simple as choosing the right basic template and adding the right filters. Like "standard aura. filter 1 = within 5 spaces, filter 2 = type is zombie, effect = regen + 10%" This is how movement and basic attacks already work to some degree.

[Jayce]

Very cool.  All Java I presume?

Are you using swing or something similar for the UI?

[Margalis]

All Java. The UI is just a Canvas that I paint to. For the army editor/card collection part of it I will probably use Swing because I need tables, things to drag and drop, etc.

[Hoax]

"So right now I'm looking for some mechanics I can start to implement."

-Area of Effect damage, whether ranged or pbaoe
-Damage over time effects
-Cone damage effects (i.e. breath attacks from a dragon or whatever)
-Resistence to range or melee damage (think Bretonian knights in WHfantasy and Ninjas respectively)

Also how detailed and important are the maps?  Will you have a series of types of tiles with some amount of effect to them ala Tactics Ogre?  Just wondering because it'd be simple to do if your using MtG as a basis you have the 5 colors and their relationships already mapped out.

[Margalis]

Good suggestions.

I never really liked that in Tactics Ogre certain bricks gave advantages to different pieces, because it often seemed arbitray. Using a magic color-scheme I think it would make a lot more sense, but I wonder how it could be balanced. For example say green gets bonuses from vegatation and white from plains. What does black get bonuses from? Swamps? Cause I can't imagine a lot of maps would be all swampy.

That might also restrict the types of maps as they should all be somewhat balanced. So I couldn't make an all forest map. I will certainly have stuff like high ground confers some advantages, foliage makes you harder to hit, that sort of thing.

What I might do is instead of simply having certain bricks affect certain colors, make it a bit more nuanced, like water makes you move slower but some blue units have swimming to counter-act that. Or you can't fly over dense foliage, something like that. Lava damages you unless you are a red elemental creature.

[Margalis]

I added some flying units to the game, added card colors, and changed some cosmetic stuff.

One of the most fun things about doing something like this is saving old screenshots and builds so you can look back later and marvel at the progress. Too bad I don't have the original screens where the map wasn't isometricQ

[Margalis]

Yes I'm bumping my own thread. I've been thinking about the networking, trying to figure out what I want to do exactly. I don't have a great idea of where I'm heading, so I'm looking for ideas.

The parts where you get cards and such obviously has to be online with a secure server. What about the games though? Does it make sense to drop to peer-to-peer for that part or should that be mediated by a server also? I'm leaning towards everything through a server, I don't think the game will be high traffic at all. (All that has to be sent are the moves, like "queen to A3" sorts of things - maybe 1 message every 2 seconds or so)

Besides that I'm in the midst of implementing timed actions like every 100 ticks some guy regenerates, takes poison damage, etc.

[Murgos]

If you do timed actions then you absolutely need to do server side arbitration.  Hands of the enemy and all that.

I've been thinking it would be an interesting idea to do anonymous 3rd party arbitration.  Pick some low ping neighbor (in internet terms) client to act as an arbitrator.  Cut's down on your server load (just assign an arbitrator), the client(s) get low pings (low lag) because they are using a server thats local (again in internet terms) to them and should be fairly secure.

[Hoax]

So are we ready for testing yet?  I've been playing Dofus a bunch (turn-based French MMG) so I actually have some recent reference between that and playing Tactics Ogre for a weekend last month.

[Margalis]

Ha ha, testing will not be for a while. At least a couple of months, if not more.

As far as timed actions go, the way the game is set up now everything is turned based but there is a sort of internal clock. For example, you knight may move, then 50 ticks later a troll regenerates, and 20 ticks after that it's the Ninja's turn to go. But that doesn't happen in real time, to you it just looks like knight->regen->Ninja one after the other. It's like the weight system of Tactics Ogre.

Of course, making it actually real-time would be very possible.

[Yegolev]

Me no like real time.

That be all.

[Descended]

If you want someone else's tick based system to measure against, here is a faq that includes a gameflow mechanics section, regarding FFT: http://db.gamefaqs.com/console/psx/file/final_fantasy_tactics_battle_mechanics.txt (see Appendix A).  The fact you can dedicate yourself to a project like this and actually make progress makes me so jealous.

[Margalis]

Thanks, I have a pretty good idea of how Tactics Ogre works and FFT is somewhat similar, although FFT did make various actions have delays. In Tactics Ogre individual actions you take happen immediately, just turns and such come in order based on stuff like what you did last time.

Edit: As far as the dedication stuff goes, I work in spurts when I have time and motivation. I am a very fast programmer so I can make progress pretty quick when I have a couple hours.

[Stephen Zepp]

You may also want to check out the Torque Network Library--as well as the white paper floating around the 'net describing the Tribes networking (which is what TNL and Torque use). TNL can be used for reference, but shouldn't be dropped into your project or anthing without a license.

[Margalis]

I am actually familiar with that stuff already. I have the Torque source lying around on my computer someplace. (Paid for of course!) That sort of thing would be overkill, although from what I understand that Torque networking is quite good. I don't think I'll have much problem with the actual networking details, it's more the big picture thing. One thing I want to be very careful of is cheating, which says to me I should probably just have a server between all transactions.

[Margalis]

Just a random update, I've started working on the server part of this thing, which is why I've been quiet for a while. Hopefully by the end of next week you'll be able to play 2 players by connecting to a server. Of course getting that to work is going to take a fair amount of refactoring.