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[Il Palazzo]

Are the maps going to be E-W wraparounds, or also N-S?

[Lap]

Improvement slots could be a very good way to diversify the provinces a bit more. If such a system were to be used I would probably make the tokens for hills, swamp, etc. negatively effect the available space. This could also prevent mountains from becoming super cities, though I'm sure some people would like the option to do so despite exorbitant costs.

Maps wrap around E-W, but trying to make these rectangular maps wrap vertically probably isn't worth it. They would actually wrap North to another distant North;South to another distant South.

To wrap around N-S the maps should probably be more square. Either way rendering wrap around on a 2D plan gets really confusing to players. Having true spherical wrap around really works best if you have a sphere that you can rotate. The only two options I have are to either tile the map image, which looks bewildering, or to just show the map and then give some arrows going of the map to indicate that it wraps around. The game can support any type of wrap around, but I wonder if N-S is too much.


Good news everyone! On a whim I decided to mess around with multiplayer coding, figuring it would be a huge nightmare. In a few hours I created the server-client code and got two games to connect through TCP/IP and pass a full save to one another. So multiplayer almost certainly be present in the initial release.

One thing that concerns me about multiplayer is I have idea how to keep evil hosts from prying at other players turns or changing data. Clients are super safe from other clients or cheating themselves, but I can't think of how I stop someone from changing the server code without clients knowing. I guess I could try checking md5 hashes for both the client and server, but since it's just the file size that is being checked, a good hacker will just end up making their new hacked version the exact same size as before. Any genius ideas for this?

[Virex]

Planets don't tipicaly connect N-S, bot flying over the poles should be possible.

For race diversification, perhaps we could moddel the system after Stars! and EotFS? Stars had you chose 1 mayor trait and several minor which togheter determined if you could get certain techs. Besides that EotFS had you chose characteristics for your house which would influence relations, morale and income amongst others. Perhaps a combination of those could work? That way we can make units that are specific to certain mayor or minor traits.

[Alexhans]

I just found out about this... I'd say plan, plan, plan, design, design, design but it seems you already know that...

I'll check this out later.

In the meantime, good luck.

[Lap]

So I was testing out the multiplayer code a bit more and I decided to benchmark it in a way by doing a little side project. I got kind of carried away, as I often do (which is even how this very project got started). In about five hours I had made this:



Full physics, collision, you can build ships from smaller components and command them to battle it out on a 2D plane. It was super smooth when my friend and I tested it over the internet.

It was actually so successful that it makes me want to include it as a way of resolving space combat. It would of course be optional, as it could bog down multiplayer games. Either way, it's nice to know the multiplayer code works so well and that I can so quickly create a tactical combat system.

[Virex]

Could we use an adapted version of how Stars! handles it's combat? That is, each unit gets to move a certain ammount of squares based upon their speed, witht he one with the highest initiative starting. Each unit has a specific behaviour, which defines who it will attack and if and when it will flee. A similar system could be adapted to have your generals fight out battles during the generation of a new turn.

[Lap]

The way Stars! handles combat is fairly similar to how dominions 3 handles combat. Oddly enough, I think it may end up being even more difficult than if human players were in control, which is too bad, because the way Stars and dom3 handle combat works best with the simultaneous turn system.

[dephbokks]

Glad to see the multiplayer aspect is going well. Hopefully I can get the map editor in a good spot soon and start to check out some of the actual game code.

Just wanted to give a quick update on the editor. I took Davion's suggestion and turned off the warping at the poles (spherical noise versus cylindrical). And he is right, that the spherical noise allows for texturing of a 3D sphere. (Just out of curiosity what did you user to render that rotating sphere, Davion? Blender?) The problem is is that there is no easy conversion/mapping from spherical noise to cylindrical noise so I am afraid it is either/or not both.

So for the time being I am going to externalize the map generation parameters in a map.ini file. That way Davion or whoever else uses it can open up the editor, open up the ini file and then generate a map. Then he could edit the parameters in the ini file and save 'em. Then press generate again and the editor would reload the map parameters.

Any way enough talking. Here are some images. Notice the spherical mapping is turned off. We use cylindrical noise. It wraps at the east/west edges of the map, but not at the poles:



And now we have a province generator. It is not perfect yet, but it can easily be cleaned up outside of the editor in photshop/gimp whatever. It can render the political boundaries with full opacity or about half opacity (or really any alpha the designer wants) as shown below:

[Lap]

Wtf deph. Stop overshadowing me !

No matter what happens to this project, even if I fall down a fiery pit of doom and am never heard from again; the project will still be able to produce something of value through your editor. That editor is versatile enough to be used for the entire genre of turn based strategy.

This is the kind of awesomeness that makes me question whether I should try to make planets 3d textured globes instead of 2D maps.

I'm actually really interested in the basic concept behind how your province generator works. Some of the code you use to color whole provinces might actually be really useful for the in game world map. Currently, I just have the cities as the ones being highlighted, colored and manipulated, while the 2d map image shows the static province borders. In short, I have no idea how you colored those provinces "in the lines"

A related problem that hasn't been addressed is how to best solve the problem of how to represent the edge wrapping. I can simply have the map literally wrap around so that if you go really far left the game starts drawing the far east end of the map. The downside to this is that when you scroll out the map looks really weird.

The other option would be to have it just be a map like we would normally see, but with some indicators on the east and west edges that it does actually wrap and that units can traverse to the other side. What would those indicators be if this was the route and how/when would they be displayed?

On a different note I had a breakthrough with a sprite displaying function and I've increased the FPS by about 10x what I was previously inefficiently doing. Hooray!

[Chutney]

That editor is versatile enough to be used for the entire genre of turn based strategy.

Really... I think I need this editor... (I plan on making a turn based strategy game a lot like this one over the summer). I was planning on making an editor myself BUT if Deph ever releases his (has he earlier in the thread? I might've skipped a few pages...) and it's as powerful as you say...

Anyways, I've been watching this thread since the beginning and think the design has been shaping up really nicely. Especially the multi-player breakthrough you made! I think every game like this needs multi-player features!
Lookin' good, Lap!

[Il Palazzo]

A related problem that hasn't been addressed is how to best solve the problem of how to represent the edge wrapping. I can simply have the map literally wrap around so that if you go really far left the game starts drawing the far east end of the map. The downside to this is that when you scroll out the map looks really weird.

If you're going to only allow E-W wrapping, i.e. a cylindrical representation, then all you need to do is make the maximum zoom-out to show the 100% of map area. The map would only look weird if you'd allow for zooming out more than that, and who needs to see more than the whole map anyway?
In dom3 the wraparound maps seemed weird because these were toroidal(E-W + N-S wrap).

Of course, having each planet become a 3d globe like in UFO would be most awesomesauce. On the other hand, I can't even imagine the amount of work it'd involve.

I think every game like this needs multi-player features!

The point is, as I believe, that this is going to be multiplayer-ONLY game.

[Davion]

A related problem that hasn't been addressed is how to best solve the problem of how to represent the edge wrapping. I can simply have the map literally wrap around so that if you go really far left the game starts drawing the far east end of the map. The downside to this is that when you scroll out the map looks really weird.

You should just have the camera stop when it gets to the borders, and when you zoom out it just shows the entire map, as Il Palazzo said. Just treat it as a wrap around map when moving units comes into play.

Just wanted to give a quick update on the editor. I took Davion's suggestion and turned off the warping at the poles (spherical noise versus cylindrical). And he is right, that the spherical noise allows for texturing of a 3D sphere. (Just out of curiosity what did you user to render that rotating sphere, Davion? Blender?) The problem is is that there is no easy conversion/mapping from spherical noise to cylindrical noise so I am afraid it is either/or not both.

I use Maya, and have that scene in the render set up and saved. That basically means all I have to do is replace the textures that are applied to the sphere, render it (takes a minute or two), and then we'll have everything we need content-wise for a galaxy map or whatever.

[Virex]

I'm wondering, most if Davions textures look like they could be remade using some combinations of different kinds of noise. Perhaps it would be possible to alter the map generator in such a way that it generates a surface that's similar?

[Lap]

I fixed some more bugs in the GUI and made it feel a bit more smooth. I had to do a lot of backend work which isn't very fun since the changes aren't readily noticeable at first. Even less fun was noticing that there was an obscure built in function to enable proper word wrapping and I previously spent a couple hours making and tweaking my own word wrap function. /facepalm

I switched my efforts to making the whole map wraparound horizontally. It was a bigger bitch than I thought because it means I need to draw the same city multiple times to preserve the illusion that the map is actually scrolling. More annoying was making the connection lines and orders between provinces at the edges of the map work properly.

Everything looks pretty good now and the whole map can wrap seamlessly from one end to the other. I'll be moving onto making the message window and army inspector next. Though the GUI is pretty plain at the moment, I might still be posting a video to show what's been done so far.

[Lap]

I did some work on the options menu and fiddled around with trying to avoid making players restart their client to change resolutions, but it might be unavoidable.

I'm also working on the army/unit screen that shows the available units in a province and of the armies (groups of units) that are stationed there. If anyone wants to try their hand at a UI mockup of how it should look and how you should be able to place units in armies be my guest.

Il-Palazzo was asking some questions on diplomacy so I'm going to try my hand at that here.

Diplomacy

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I haven't actually fleshed out much of it because it is typically one of the last things to get implemented into a strategy game (unless there is a super huge diplomacy focus). I also held off thinking about it because this is primarily a multiplayer game, which means that a lot of the diplomacy doesn't always need to be hard coded.

The absolute basics that will be in the game are:
-Alliances
-Nonaggression-Pacts
-War
-Trading
-Voting system for Emperor and any other positions.

How much further should the diplomacy go? Here's the restrictions we have to work with:

-Players cannot be guaranteed to be online at the exact same moment. This is essentially glorified PBEM.
-Players use their own system to evaluate trustworthiness.
-There will be some AI factions, but they do not function in the same sense as the player. Their decisions will be limited.

The primary questions I have are:

Should treaties be immediately breakable at all?
If they don't have any consequences other than loss of trust from other players the trend becomes never actually making any more than verbal agreements. By "breakable" I mean they would either have time limits. Another idea would be to have them only breakable by sending a canceling message on one turn followed by the automatic dissolving of the treaty X turns later. Treachery is fun, but when there are so little consequences for it it really doesn't even become a decision.

Similarly, should there be an artificial game mechanic that penalizes players for breaking treaties?
These options could include things like:
-Loss of standing with few AI factions.
-Actual monetary fines from the Emperor.
-Faction wide morale or production hit or something for appearing dishonorable.

How should communication work?
I figure I can't stop players from talking outside the game so I might as well just let everyone talk from the beginning. It also makes sense given the backstory of the game. Actual diplomatic treaties would probably have to be sending an offer on one turn and having it accepted or rejected the next turn.

Should there be any diplomatic actions that need to be researched?
I can't think of any that would require it, but there might be some far out idea that would make sense.

Lasting trade pacts - Should these even exist? How would they work?
My concern is that they seem to have little downsides and are thus, not a choice. Why wouldn't I want to engage in trade treaties with everyone I'm not at war with?

Research pacts - Some games have had the idea of allowing two players to enter a research treaty that allows them to both get a 10% bonus to their research or something.

One time trade deals- These are the staple of trading in almost every game. I give you X and you give me Y. Should there be items you can't trade?
Can I trade 5 wheat, two militia guys, and a tech for a planet?

Tech trading -

I am highly against tech trading in general because it is a huge rich get richer mechanism. New tech means that you spend that first turn trading it to everyone you can. If you're late to research a tech not only are you already behind, but you probably can't trade it to anyone, which means you're even more behind. A middle ground on this issue is to use a system called "No tech brokering" where you can only trade tech you have researched yourself.

Another option I kind of like is to disallow tech trading, but instead allow treaties that temporarily give access to certain tech. You piss off your braniac friend and he'll pull out of the deal and you can't build those dark matter tanks or whatever. Similarly, just being able to buy units from people with better tech seems to fit theme of secrecy and proprietary tech that this universe has.

Bounties - Described in the design docs, someone secretly places a universe wide bounty on a player and anyone who damages that player gets money withdrawn from this pot dependent on the amount of damage done. Games like sins of a solar empire even had a neutral faction that would attack the player with the highest bounty to shake things up.

Contracts - Not a well developed idea yet, but it would essentially be an agreement for future action that would actually be enforceable by the game code and not just a verbal agreement.

United Nations Type Mechanics (Bidding/Pooling) - To bring players together a bit more I've developed some ideas that really force a lot of player interactions. If you are interested in something like this I wrote a treatise on the subject using some unique ideas at http://forums.elementalgame.com/374818