Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 7

Author Topic: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game - Factions arise  (Read 10956 times)

Mephansteras

  • Bay Watcher
  • Forger of Civilizations
    • View Profile
Roguelike Conquest/Civ game - Factions arise
« on: December 13, 2012, 08:45:04 pm »

I've had a number of ideas for computer games, but they all tend to fizzle or get shelved. I want to change that.

I played around with a Python Rogue-like tutorial a while back. That went well, but Python was distracting me from learning another programming language.

Namely C#, which I need to get myself up to speed on for a non-game related project. I knew c++ pretty well, but those skills are kind of rusty. Still, should help out a bit.

I could do a standard rogue-like, but I like strategy games more.

So...I'm planning on an expandable conquest/civ-lite game. The idea is to start fairly small, but have a flexible framework which will let me add in new things fairly easily.

It's going to be ASCII because...I'm not too good at art and it annoys me. And I like ASCII. Combat is going to be at the army level and calculated out. However, simplistic models annoy me so I'm going to have a more in-depth combat system than most games use. Also, I plan on having combat logs that can be saved and viewed.

The world itself is going to be pretty simple from a simulation standpoint. I'm going to keep track of a few types of things on the overworld: Cities, Villages, Forts, Roads, and Armies. Possibly special locations, we'll see.

Cities and Villages will mostly be kept simple, except I'm going to have a decent population model in place. This is because I want to measure not only the Gold/resource cost of making units but also the impact of war on the population. As you train more and more units, and suffer more and more casualties, it should have a noticeable impact on the able-bodied population and the taxes you can get from them.

Units themselves are going to store a lot of data, and the combat system will be pretty in-depth. But only under the hood. Most of these details will be available but there won't be a whole lot for you to do with them. Your orders will be pretty simple and for the most part it'll be a basic Move Armies - Fight - Move on sort of deal.

Initially, I'm going to restrict myself to basic unit types (Swordsmen, Pikemen, Horsemen, Archers). Special stuff can show up later.

Lots more to figure out. But I wanted to get something going for this and get my thoughts down.

Current Progress:
    C# roguelike library found (Amaranth, a roguelike that's open source.)
    Design Outline done
    Basic World Gen - Cities/Villages/Factions

Next Steps:
    Screen/UI

Spoiler: Feature List (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: February 14, 2013, 01:17:50 pm by Mephansteras »
Logged
Civilization Forge Mod v2.80: Adding in new races, equipment, animals, plants, metals, etc. Now with Alchemy and Libraries! Variety to spice up DF! (For DF 0.34.10)
Come play Mafia with us!
"Let us maintain our chill composure." - Toady One

Mephansteras

  • Bay Watcher
  • Forger of Civilizations
    • View Profile
Re: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game (In planning stage)
« Reply #1 on: December 13, 2012, 08:46:54 pm »

First notes section:

Spoiler: World Map (click to show/hide)

----------------------------------------------------------

Spoiler: Units (click to show/hide)

---------------------------------------------------
 
Spoiler: Sample Units (click to show/hide)

---------------------------------------------------
 
Spoiler: Sample Units (click to show/hide)

---------------------------------------------------

Spoiler: Combat (click to show/hide)

----------------------------------------------------

Spoiler: World Map Actions (click to show/hide)

----------------------------------------------------

Spoiler: Fog of War (click to show/hide)

----------------------------------------------------

 
Spoiler: Plans (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: March 19, 2013, 05:42:56 pm by Mephansteras »
Logged
Civilization Forge Mod v2.80: Adding in new races, equipment, animals, plants, metals, etc. Now with Alchemy and Libraries! Variety to spice up DF! (For DF 0.34.10)
Come play Mafia with us!
"Let us maintain our chill composure." - Toady One

Max White

  • Bay Watcher
  • Still not hollowed!
    • View Profile
Re: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game (In planning stage)
« Reply #2 on: December 13, 2012, 08:53:02 pm »

I will defiantly have to watch this.  :D
I'm pretty handy with C#, so if you have any queries then there is either the Programmers thread in general, or right here I guess to ask. It is pretty simple once you know what you are doing.

Current Progress:
    C# roguelike library found

Interesting, what are you using?

Mephansteras

  • Bay Watcher
  • Forger of Civilizations
    • View Profile
Re: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game (In planning stage)
« Reply #3 on: December 13, 2012, 10:49:53 pm »

(Had to take over this post because my previous notes section ran out of room. The answer to Max's question is now up in the OP)


Second Notes section:

Spoiler: Factions (click to show/hide)

----------------------------------------------------

Spoiler: AI (click to show/hide)

----------------------------------------------------

Spoiler: Diplomacy (click to show/hide)
     
     
----------------------------------------------------

Spoiler: Territory (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: February 08, 2013, 07:03:49 pm by Mephansteras »
Logged
Civilization Forge Mod v2.80: Adding in new races, equipment, animals, plants, metals, etc. Now with Alchemy and Libraries! Variety to spice up DF! (For DF 0.34.10)
Come play Mafia with us!
"Let us maintain our chill composure." - Toady One

inEQUALITY

  • Bay Watcher
  • Living On the Mirror's Edge
    • View Profile
Re: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game (In planning stage)
« Reply #4 on: December 13, 2012, 10:58:46 pm »

I'm definitely interested in seeing where this is headed!
Logged
Quote from: Carl Sagan
It does no harm to the romance of the sunset to know a little bit about it.
If the magma cannon doesn't count, they aren't proper scientists.

Max White

  • Bay Watcher
  • Still not hollowed!
    • View Profile
Re: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game (In planning stage)
« Reply #5 on: December 13, 2012, 11:18:56 pm »

Amaranth, a roguelike that's open source. Looks promising, but I haven't gotten a chance to play with it too much yet. We'll see how it goes.

If nothing else, it should provide some useful utility functions and code examples.
If that doesn't work out for you, one option is using libtcod.
I have to say I have been less than impressed with its poor class structure and pathetic excuse for documentation, but the algorithms are good. I get the feeling it was made by a mathematician who was focused on preformance, rather than a programmer who would put more effort into usability and standards.
Still, it does the job and has a lot of functionality that can make life a lot easier.

dwarfhoplite

  • Bay Watcher
  • Gentledwarves, prepare for Glory!
    • View Profile
Re: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game (In planning stage)
« Reply #6 on: December 14, 2012, 04:31:04 pm »

Funny that I too plan to write a tile based strategy game on the topic of managing city states.
Logged

Mephansteras

  • Bay Watcher
  • Forger of Civilizations
    • View Profile
Re: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game (In planning stage)
« Reply #7 on: December 19, 2012, 06:41:55 pm »

Hoping to actually start working on world gen tonight.

In the meantime, I've been pondering Neutral cities and armies.

Obviously, Neutral cities need to build defenders to make taking them at least a little bit of a challenge. And I'd like them to feel 'alive' even if they aren't part of a faction.

So here are my thoughts on the matter:

Neutral cities will actively try to defend themselves and their surrounding villages.
     - This implies that villages can be attacked/plundered. This would probably take the taxes from that village for the season and kill a few villagers. Not a big blow, but not something that you want to ignore forever.
     - Since we have forts, they seem a good way to reflect this in addition to the cities own garrison.

Therefore:

Neutral cities will always keep at least 1 unit garrisoning the city. All forts connected to that city will also keep at least 1 unit.
    A village that has a friendly unit adjacent to it cannot be pillaged. This way if you want to pillage some villages (owned by anyone) you have to first knock out the defending forts. Makes forts more useful as well.

That's probably a good start. It means that they'll slowly build up defenses but won't make giant super-stacks and your armies should be able to ultimately conquer even a large neutral city. Later on I'd like to get Neutral cities to do more. Maye intelligently pull back units to the main city if you have a large army, stuff like that.

This structure also allows for bandits pretty easily. They can be weak units (militia level) that pop up and look for undefended villages to pillage. They wouldn't be a major threat, but they would provide an incentive to keep your cities at least lightly defended.
   
Logged
Civilization Forge Mod v2.80: Adding in new races, equipment, animals, plants, metals, etc. Now with Alchemy and Libraries! Variety to spice up DF! (For DF 0.34.10)
Come play Mafia with us!
"Let us maintain our chill composure." - Toady One

GalenEvil

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
    • Mac-Man Games
Re: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game (In planning stage)
« Reply #8 on: January 11, 2013, 05:02:01 am »

* GalenEvil hopes this hasn't died out :P
This looks pretty cool, so PTW! Like MaxWhite I am also handy in C# so queries can be thrown at me as well :)
Logged
Fun is Fun......Done is Done... or is that Done is !!FUN!!?
Quote from: Mr Frog
Digging's a lot like surgery, see -- you grab the sharp thing and then drive the sharp end of the sharp thing in as hard as you can and then stuff goes flying and then stuff falls out and then there's a big hole and you're done. I kinda wish there was more screaming, but rocks don't hurt so I guess it can't be helped.

Mephansteras

  • Bay Watcher
  • Forger of Civilizations
    • View Profile
Re: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game (In planning stage)
« Reply #9 on: January 11, 2013, 10:34:38 am »

It isn't dead! In fact, I was actually working on this yesterday. Took me longer to find the time to code than I expected. Still working on world gen at this point and learning this library that I picked up. I'm hoping to have something to show off soon.
Logged
Civilization Forge Mod v2.80: Adding in new races, equipment, animals, plants, metals, etc. Now with Alchemy and Libraries! Variety to spice up DF! (For DF 0.34.10)
Come play Mafia with us!
"Let us maintain our chill composure." - Toady One

Skyrunner

  • Bay Watcher
  • ?!?!
    • View Profile
    • Portfolio
Re: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game (In planning stage)
« Reply #10 on: January 12, 2013, 01:45:07 am »

If that doesn't work out for you, one option is using libtcod.
I have to say I have been less than impressed with its poor class structure and pathetic excuse for documentation, but the algorithms are good. I get the feeling it was made by a mathematician who was focused on preformance, rather than a programmer who would put more effort into usability and standards.
Still, it does the job and has a lot of functionality that can make life a lot easier.
Libtcod's maker is pretty nice :P He answers bug reports on his forum quickly.

And ... I don't like the color code system for printing strings, but yeah >_< I suppose I can write my own function.

Anyways, PTW!
Logged

bay12 lower boards IRC:irc.darkmyst.org @ #bay12lb
"Oh, they never lie. They dissemble, evade, prevaricate, confoud, confuse, distract, obscure, subtly misrepresent and willfully misunderstand with what often appears to be a positively gleeful relish ... but they never lie" -- Look To Windward

Mephansteras

  • Bay Watcher
  • Forger of Civilizations
    • View Profile
Re: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game (In planning stage)
« Reply #11 on: January 17, 2013, 04:19:05 pm »

Still working on getting a decent handle on this library. Looks like it'll make things a lot easier once I get it working, but like most complicated things it's a bit tough to get into.

Anyway, spent most of the morning working on stuff and reading through the code of the game the developer of the library made with it. So I'm making progress, if a bit slower than I'd like.
Logged
Civilization Forge Mod v2.80: Adding in new races, equipment, animals, plants, metals, etc. Now with Alchemy and Libraries! Variety to spice up DF! (For DF 0.34.10)
Come play Mafia with us!
"Let us maintain our chill composure." - Toady One

Akhier the Dragon hearted

  • Bay Watcher
  • I'm a Dragon, Roar
    • View Profile
    • My YouTube Channel
Re: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game (In planning stage)
« Reply #12 on: January 17, 2013, 05:08:36 pm »

Definitely an interesting Idea, I will be following.
Logged
Quote
Join us. The crazy is at a perfect temperature today.
So it seems I accidentally put my canteen in my wheelbarrow and didn't notice... and then I got really thirsty... so right before going to sleep I go to take a swig from my canteen and... end up snorting a line of low-grade meth.

Mephansteras

  • Bay Watcher
  • Forger of Civilizations
    • View Profile
Re: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game (In planning stage)
« Reply #13 on: January 18, 2013, 07:39:43 pm »

Progress!

I have the world map initialized and printing to screen. It's just all grasslands at this point, but this means that I've started to get a solid idea of how to use this library.

Next up, the actual world building algorithm.
Logged
Civilization Forge Mod v2.80: Adding in new races, equipment, animals, plants, metals, etc. Now with Alchemy and Libraries! Variety to spice up DF! (For DF 0.34.10)
Come play Mafia with us!
"Let us maintain our chill composure." - Toady One

Mephansteras

  • Bay Watcher
  • Forger of Civilizations
    • View Profile
Re: Roguelike Conquest/Civ game - Progress!
« Reply #14 on: January 23, 2013, 02:53:00 am »

Progress!




So, yeah. Basic world gen is done. Well, terrain at least. Not perfect, and rivers will have to wait for a later iteration. But it's enough for me to move on to adding cities, factions, villages, and forts. Not sure if Roads will make it in yet. Probably not, since I'm thinking it might be a good idea to get myself to the point where I can move units around and fight before I deal with things like that.

In any case, I feel pretty good about this since I've been working on this for quite a while. It's really nice to have this out of the way so I can start thinking about more interesting stuff. Also, the max font this library has by default is a bit too small for my laptop monitor, so I'll probably have to look into expanding that sometime soon. Maybe grab the DF 16x16 one or something. Not crucial right now, of course, but will probably happen before I get too far into the actual game code since the small size kind of bugs me.

I start my new job tomorrow so I'm not sure how much time I'll have in the next few days to work on this, but I'm looking forward to getting some more progress on this soon!
Logged
Civilization Forge Mod v2.80: Adding in new races, equipment, animals, plants, metals, etc. Now with Alchemy and Libraries! Variety to spice up DF! (For DF 0.34.10)
Come play Mafia with us!
"Let us maintain our chill composure." - Toady One
Pages: [1] 2 3 ... 7