Wars

[bzar]

New carrier indicators and stuff.

 

[bzar]

Fixed the bug in unit deletion.

 

[bzar]

Fixed auto-surrendering non-active players and implemented surrendering during game.


People on the dev server take note that the current database implementation scales REALLY badly, because it's meant only for development. Everything in the site gets slower the more stuff is added into it. Just so you know that after I implement a production-worthy database interface, things will get faster .

 

[fusion_power]

Faster is always better.


I noticed the carrier indicator already, to be honest, it is slightly confusing. The white boxes could also look like there are units in. I recommend to just display boxes when a unit is actualy in the carrier (one or two). Empty Carrier vehicles show nothing.


OR you could make just a thin frame, a transparent rectangle, if you want to have a "empty" graphic for the loading indication. Should look more intuitive. (Actualy, exactly like the old indicator - just spotted it yet on the normal Wars server )


EDIT: I'm through with the Vehicles, finaly! Air Units next, I've noticed I suck in making Planes and Helicopters. h34r: I guess it will not get better than the Heli currently looks, I hope it is still good enough. ^^

 

[bzar]

I noticed the carrier indicator already, to be honest, it is slightly confusing. The white boxes could also look like there are units in. I recommend to just display boxes when a unit is actualy in the carrier (one or two). Empty Carrier vehicles show nothing.


OR you could make just a thin frame, a transparent rectangle, if you want to have a "empty" graphic for the loading indication. Should look more intuitive. (Actualy, exactly like the old indicator - just spotted it yet on the normal Wars server )

The thin frame was a bit hard to see on some of your graphics. I'll see if I can make the indicator less confusing. I'd like to have some indication of the unit's carrying capabilities. At one point I thought about giving scouts the ability to carry one infantry unit and raise their price a bit.

EDIT: I'm through with the Vehicles, finaly! Air Units next, I've noticed I suck in making Planes and Helicopters. h34r: I guess it will not get better than the Heli currently looks, I hope it is still good enough. ^^

Yay!

Reset the dev server database again. Added game event gathering and relaying to the client. The event viewer is not finished yet, so no visible changes.


EDIT: I just got an idea about scriptable themes. Basically a theme could define how a specific situation is rendered. This way you could have the landed air units and openable bridges and whatnot. The interface would be a single javascript file that defines a specific function. The function would get information about the tile and possible unit to be rendered and return a list of rect definitions that specify which parts of the sprite sheet are rendered and in what order. The upside of a solution like this would be backwards compatibility with simpler themes. This is still very much on an idea stage, but at some point it might make theming a lot more interesting

 

[Blue Protoman]

Boats can go past bridges, right?


Also, I'm liking the new graphics! Great job, Fusion!

 

[SavageMind]

Very interesting looking game.

 

[milkshake]

EDIT: I just got an idea about scriptable themes. Basically a theme could define how a specific situation is rendered. This way you could have the landed air units and openable bridges and whatnot. The interface would be a single javascript file that defines a specific function. The function would get information about the tile and possible unit to be rendered and return a list of rect definitions that specify which parts of the sprite sheet are rendered and in what order. The upside of a solution like this would be backwards compatibility with simpler themes. This is still very much on an idea stage, but at some point it might make theming a lot more interesting

does this mean we could use jqeury also? as that would open up the ability to have some basic anitmation i.e. see the units move but without the sprites really actually animating of course

 

[bzar]

does this mean we could use jqeury also? as that would open up the ability to have some basic anitmation i.e. see the units move but without the sprites really actually animating of course

No you couldn't. The game view is HTML5 canvas and cannot be trivially animated with JQuery. If someone wants to implement animation just fork the git and make it happen . I'll find a way to merge the changes back so that it's an optional feature after that. I'd be delighted to have some help with this .


Animation is considered, but IMO there's a lot more pressing and quicker stuff to do first.


EDIT: @BlueProtoman: yes.

 

[fusion_power]

The thin frame was a bit hard to see on some of your graphics. I'll see if I can make the indicator less confusing. I'd like to have some indication of the unit's carrying capabilities. At one point I thought about giving scouts the ability to carry one infantry unit and raise their price a bit.

I try to draw some indicators, I'm also not sure what could look nice, would be nice if they are part of the sprite sheet, same for the "deploy" indicator.


Nice Idea with the Scout. Could make capturing buildings faster in early game. For the APC, loading/unloading could need a slight overhaul, I would like to unload 2 units in the same round (optional)

EDIT: I just got an idea about scriptable themes. Basically a theme could define how a specific situation is rendered. This way you could have the landed air units and openable bridges and whatnot. The interface would be a single javascript file that defines a specific function. The function would get information about the tile and possible unit to be rendered and return a list of rect definitions that specify which parts of the sprite sheet are rendered and in what order. The upside of a solution like this would be backwards compatibility with simpler themes. This is still very much on an idea stage, but at some point it might make theming a lot more interesting

Sounds complicated. Take your time, I guess it is not that important right now. Visible Movement would be nice, or at least arrows like in AdvanceWars that show the path of the unit. Visual movement/fire range of each unit could also help. Appears when clicking on the unit, also with enemy units.

If I would recommend a feature, I would like to see Units can face in different directions, depending of how they move/fight. I already rendered all of my units from both sides so they are ready for this feature.

 

[bzar]

I try to draw some indicators, I'm also not sure what could look nice, would be nice if they are part of the sprite sheet, same for the "deploy" indicator.

Potentially possible at some point

Nice Idea with the Scout. Could make capturing buildings faster in early game. For the APC, loading/unloading could need a slight overhaul, I would like to unload 2 units in the same round (optional)

I'll need to consider both of these from a balancing point of view. The gameplay is pretty balanced at the time, so any changes need to be thought out carefully.

Sounds complicated. Take your time, I guess it is not that important right now. Visible Movement would be nice, or at least arrows like in AdvanceWars that show the path of the unit. Visual movement/fire range of each unit could also help. Appears when clicking on the unit, also with enemy units.

The arrows/movement path input will need to be done for fog of war to work. Visual movement is in the roadmap backlog, I'll get to it when I get the basic things (there's a lot of non-visible work to be done) and "low hanging fruits" (quick tasks with proportionally big benefits) done. Showing enemies' movement/fire ranges I actually had already planned a long time ago, but I had already forgotten about it .

If I would recommend a feature, I would like to see Units can face in different directions, depending of how they move/fight. I already rendered all of my units from both sides so they are ready for this feature.

In the roadmap. Planned for version 1.1. Though I was considering just mirroring the units instead of having separate graphics. The scripted themes would solve this too .

 

[fusion_power]

In the roadmap. Planned for version 1.1. Though I was considering just mirroring the units instead of having separate graphics. The scripted themes would solve this too .

Mirroring would be possible but then, the entire light/shadow setup of the sprites would be completely wrong. Thats why I made 2 sides of the units. Ohterwise I have to set the light in straight front/back or so, but then the units loos their contrast.


However, for the moment mirroring would work, I just had to change the shadow under the air units to the middle.

 

[bzar]

Finished game event ticker. Next up is statistics gathering.


I plan to first do all the 1.0 features that require changes to the database, then clean up the DB interface, then implement that interface with an actual DB backend. After all that is done I'll start working on the remaining features for 1.0. When I get to 1.0 I'll put up a closed beta test server for select people to try it on and find bugs. It's most important to catch as many bugs as possible at that point since then they'll most likely still be quite quick to fix. When I'm satisfied with the quality I'll replace the version running on the public server and start working on 1.1.

 

[fusion_power]

So, "under the hood" the new Version is completely different from the current public version? ^^ I just ask because besides the graphics I actualy didn't noticed anything new in the dev Version , except for the missing features of the public version. :unsure:


Of course I know that alot stuff happen that normal users do not recognize instantly.


Happy coding! ^^

 

[Blue Protoman]

So, "under the hood" the new Version is completely different from the current public version? ^^ I just ask because besides the graphics I actualy didn't noticed anything new in the dev Version , except for the missing features of the public version. :unsure:


Of course I know that alot stuff happen that normal users do not recognize instantly.


Happy coding! ^^

Most of the changes in the Gamenode version are under the hood, yes. The most obvious is the improved interface, and improved scaling. And your graphics, of course. One important thing is that thanks to this new framework, it will be possible to make an out-of-browser client with any sort of features you want; you could conceivably program a client that uses full 3D graphics, animations, and music, and relies on the browser version for the backend.

 

[bzar]

So, "under the hood" the new Version is completely different from the current public version? ^^ I just ask because besides the graphics I actualy didn't noticed anything new in the dev Version , except for the missing features of the public version. :unsure:


Of course I know that alot stuff happen that normal users do not recognize instantly.


Happy coding! ^^

The dev version is around 90-95% rewrite. Different language, different communication framework, different architecture, different everything, except for a couple of files in the web client . Wars-django is in my opinion not scalable enough to warrant more development, so I started from scratch to make something that can be extended and reused.

 

[fusion_power]

Sounds good, the new interface alone is it worth IMHO.


By the way, I was reading through the Info tables on the public wars site. Now I noticed, that artillery has diferent effectivity depending on the range, I never calculated with this during my test games. There is need for some kind of range indicator around these units, various circles (well, more diamond shapes I guess) that show the different firepower, could also come in handy for normal unis that can shoot more than 1 tile wide. ^^


This should give much more overview about the units, maybe you even can click enemy units to display their effecite range damage power.


P.S.: I found this on Deviantart:


http://skyblufox.deviantart.com/gallery/2266325


http://skyblufox.deviantart.com/gallery/2266329


damn, I witsh I've found this earlier, would have saved me alot of time.

 

[bzar]

The efficiency indicators could be a good addition. I'll put them to 1.1 milestone for now.


Those are very faithful to the original AW2 tiles . You know what would be awesome? Someone forking wars-gamenode and making a webgl-based client with 3D in-game graphics

 

[SavageMind]

Cool Sprite Sheet. What did you use to draw them if you don't mind me asking?

 

[fusion_power]

The efficiency indicators could be a good addition. I'll put them to 1.1 milestone for now.

Great!

Those are very faithful to the original AW2 tiles . You know what would be awesome? Someone forking wars-gamenode and making a webgl-based client with 3D in-game graphics

I also thought something like this. The maker of these 3D stuff wrote about, that someone could using it in a game. SOme 3D AW remake would be cool, maybe WARS could be the base but then with AI computer players I hope. Maybe we can inspire someone to make some 3D experiments with this kind of game? ^^

Cool Sprite Sheet. What did you use to draw them if you don't mind me asking?

My graphics?


For the Ground tiles I used Photoshop. For the Buildings and the Units I used Blender. It's 3D graphics resized and adjusted to 2D Sprites.