Startegy Game... Idea Stage (command & conquer)

[Cervantes]

BioHazardousWaste wrote:

Also, does anyone know how to have a graphic act like a button?
E.X. You click on a pic (unit) and it displays results (brings up info display)

code:

var x, y, btn : int loop     Mouse.Where (x, y, btn)     locate (1, 1)     put " x  : ", x     locate (2, 1)     put " y  : ", y     locate (3, 1)     put "btn : ", btn end loop

That's how to use your mouse
Mouse.Where (x,y,btn)
I'm sure you can take it from there

I think that's a really good goal, and I wish you the best of luck in making it. If you need any help with coding it give me a shout and I'll do what I can

[shorthair]

Ok in reply to dodge , how the heck can turing play a video , it can do animation of pictures but not video , he was talking about a little intro andstff , and in reply to the graphics , if you want to pu units on the screen dont you think that after mabye 5 tanks turing is going to shoot itself ( but the turn based night solve that ) , i am no where near the level of complexityit would take to code this , i mean it isnt that diffucluct in a more powerful language , but to work around turings shortcomings ,is very difficult , i think that turn based is your best bet ,

[Cervantes]

after 5 tanks turing would most definately not shoot itself.
all you need is a few arrays. one to store the x value, one for the y value, and one for the picID. if you wanted to do more graphicle things then you'd need arrays for angle and animation pic (like if its walking or not )

by the way bio.. Use records (look up type in the help file). that will make everything a LOT more organized

[shorthair]

cervanes have you ever tried having 5 moving things in turing all at once , especially ones that have graphics , just think about it , turing would be going pretty slow

[Cervantes]

yes I have... I've had WAY more than 5 going.. 100 is okay. with graphics... I don't think that should make too big of a difference. Just make the graphics pretty simple and most certainly not bmp

[shorthair]

but think of the fact that they would ned to be thinking so they would all need to have a procedure , determining wheter they shouldbe firing defending or moving , thats why turn based is the ay to do it , so you only have to worry about one unit at a time ,

[Cervantes]

if you make this turn based you should most definately make it more like civilization.. turn based C&C would just suck

anyways shorthair as long as you keep everything simple in coding it should be okay.

[Tony]

shorthair - you defenatly dont know what you're talking about...

first of all - just look at all the particle engines with 100s of objects moving individually on the screen.

And the difference between RTS and turn based is that instead of wating for the unit to compleat all of its tasks before moving to the next. In RTS it is just like turn based, but on much smaller scale. Like really small steps like move a step, reload weapon, fire, build, w/e... unit's AI determines which step to take and ends that unit's turn. But since all of it moves soo fast, it seems as if all units take those turns at same time

[shorthair]

i agree with that , but if you look at his original ideas , it dosent sound so siple does it ( and the graphics sound detailed ) , im jsut basin in on what he said , you would have to keep the graphics real easy , just enough to identify what is was

[Cervantes]

agreed. buildings, however, could be nice-looking since they don't have to move. the units should be very simple though.

First step would be to make it with coloured ovals as the guys and buildings, to get the code right. Then use single framed pictures for the units and buildings. make it as effeciant as possible. then use simple animations (like a 2 step gun firing where theres a cool looking yellow jagged triangle in front of the gun).

by the way, this going to be a top down view right?

[AsianSensation]

do OOP, cut down on graphics, like make your game super small resolution (well, not super small, but small enough so it doesn't take so long to redraw, about the size of Evasive Maneuver ships I would say would be the best). Another idea, draw only the object that you wanted to display, keep track of the info of all the other units, but draw the ones that is in range of your screen.

[BioHazardousWaste]

% ANOTHER LONG ASSED POST
% plan stuff

Here is my plan...

a) write a game before June - not the best
b) hand in for mark (better be 100% or i'll be pissed, seems how the rest of the class is doin Tic-Tac-Toe)
c) when finished.. UPGRADE to version 2, make it WAY better
d) over the summer learn some C++ and make a good real-time game

This way, I will have a final project for sure, and will not have to worry about any time limits, and that will help me work better. Version 1 will be very simple, then I will add some more advanced stuff.


Version 1: Basic game... bases, units, income (minimum)

Version 2: Research, Unit Creation, Better Animations (depends on whoevers doin gfx), Sounds (hopefully) anything else that may come up between now and then (ideas welcome)



Turn Based/Real Time
I had this thought last night, sort of to incorporate the two together. Turing can't use the vid card so grafx = shit on a stick, but there are 1000 ms in a second, and that is the CPU interupt time.... correct me if i'm wrong but that means that the CPU can handle 1000 instructions per second. Now I know windows and such takes some up, but say 5 or 10, should be no big deal. So, we could use turn based due to graphics, but have combat sort of real time. When a unit moves, the game will check within x pixels of the new location to find an enemy unit, if found it will check its stance (attack, defend, stand ground;) if the unit is close enough to the enemy, based on it's stance, combat will ocuur. Similarily, when the attacker fires, the defender will fire back (obviously)... but I was hoping to incorporate a ROF into it. (not sure if ver 1 or 2). So that a jeep's MG would fire say 25 times per turn, whereas a med tank might fire 3 timers per turn. I know this won't make it real-time, but it will be closer.

Mining Natural Resources

Quote:

As for resourses - you defenatly need to mine some natural reserves. I dont see how population taxation will work out in a military game since your town is your military base

lol NO WAY is the town going to be your base... if i do this, it will be completely different. I don't know how you would do natural resources, because you would need a pic on the map, which updates with how many resources left, you would need some way to take the resources from there, and give to player... i'm sure I could figure it out if I thought really hard, but it sounds a little confusing ATM.

Visual Aspect
Map, Graphics, Animation, Headache...
This will not have stellar graphics, I realize units will have to be very basic. I read this thing on pic.rotate and it said clipping occurrs quite frequently, and suggested that you have 8 pictures, one for each of the 8 main directions, then load the appropriate pic. But I think that would take WAY the hell to much HD space... what do you guys think, any other way around this clipping??

And overall I was planning to split the TURING window into three parts:
---------------------------------------
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm |
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm |
|mmm Map - Main Section mmm|
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm |
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm |
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm |
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm |
mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm |
--------------------------------------|
|Available Commands ||Unit Info|
----------------------------|UIUIUIUI|
User Commands (get) |UIUIUIUI|
---------------------------------------

I'm thinking of using GUI for some things... to change screens mostly (e.g. change the main map view to the research screen, or economy screen (ver 2?), or unit design screen (ver 2?)... This will more then likely be top-down view, although it may be nicer to have an angle view (noone wants to look at the top of a building)

Does anyone know how to split the window into the three dif. parts (map, info, command section), so I can refresh only that part?

[Tony]

you can use View.UpdateArea to refresh just a part of the screen.

[BioHazardousWaste]

OK, was thinking of calling the game "Era of War"... problably won't stick, but I hate unnamed projects. So, during coding it will be referred to as "Era of War", and if I change the name, it will be the last thing I do.
(Name ideas are, naturally, welcomed)

[Cervantes]

yes you can use View.UpdateArea (turing 4.0.5 only) or you could ACTUALLY have 3 different windows that would involve Window.Open.. I don't think thats the best way to go though switching between windows means having to click an extra time

I don't think clipping should be a problem.. try it first with Pic.Rotate then if that doesn't work I guess you'd have to have a bunch of different pics..
check out Asians rotation and movement tutorial at

http://www.compsci.ca/v2/viewtopic.php?t=3542