Target: Warscale Alpha
by Guimo · 09/14/2008 (6:12 pm) · 4 comments
Hi everybody following this series!
This was the last week for the prototype stage of Warscale. I'm completely happy with the progress achieved since my first blog and even when there is still a lot of work to do, I feel fairly optimistic. Let me show you some screens of the current state of the game.
The first screen is the Login screen. There is a hole where the Warscale logo should go. I'm still looking for a suitable new logo. The background it from a chinese artist who I'm trying to get an agreement to use his artwork for Warscale.
The second is the server selection screen. All the servers will be shown as regions in the world map and the server information with the server population and ther info (the ping time maybe?) will come up when the mouse moves over the region. The idea is that the servers should also show a difficulty level and will only allow you to enter if you are of a suitable level. As usual, this is just a temporal map.
The third image is the shard general lobby screen. In this screen you can see which people is logged in, you can chat with them and see the current available games. You may create a new game or join an existing game. Also you can enter the army editor, the equipment editor and the store.
As I said, I feel good on how this is going.
What does alpha means?
In software engineering, when a software reaches its alpha state it means that all features are complete and in a controlled enviroment everything should work approximately as in the final product. Of course there will probably exist a lot of bugs to be squashed and the interfaces will probably be replaced or enhanced, but all the subsystems should be operational and correctly linked.
For Warscale, reaching Alpha stage means:
Server changes
a. Improve the handling of connections and disconnections to avoid games crashing or ghost games or players appearing in the client side.
b. Game downloader and updater.
c. Handling at least three shards and multiple games playing at the same time.
d. First stress test. (Will need volunteers here).
Editor changes
a. Correctly integrate all the editors and the store with the server.
b. Improve the shard selection screen.
c. Correctly showing all the available games and allow users to connect and disconnect from the games, set game passwords and the like.
d. Creating at least three types of games based on the same rules but slightly different variations (like reducing the time available to make a move or increasing the ammount of mana each player receives each turn making the game faster).
e. Improve the game lobby which allows the players in a game to gather, chat, change the map, maybe change their selected army and launch the game.
f. Improve the option menues changing all the graphics appropiately.
g. Fix the key binds depending on the game state in order to make the user experience more pleasant.
h. Add sound effect to all the user actions.
i. Add support for background music.
j. Create the background art selection screen.
h. GuiObjectView control capable of handling particles.
Game changes
a. Create more maps. Includes improving graphics.
b. Improve the camera handling.
c. Create Sorceries.
d. Game rewards.
e. In game chat system.
f. Coloured game tracking system.
g. Optional. Store the game in the server so that it may be reviewed later.
As you see, there is work to do and really little time to do it. If you know about flexible and professional Updater which doesnt depend of a PHP/Java server (and is not too costly of course) please tell me. There is a wonderful one in the resources but it needs some modifications in order to get it working as I want. The problem is that the code is in Delphi and my Delphi skills are a bit rusty, maybe one of you may like to help me making this an appropiate downloader. Rewards can be discussed. Please drop me an email if interested.
Before I leave you, let me share something I learned in this time. If you need to update a Torque control/class/object/etc in order to suit your needs for your game, dont modify the original class. Try coppying the class to other file and rename all class names instead. For instance, GuiScrollCtrl may become GuiWSScrollCtrl or GuiObjectView may become GuiWSObjectView. This should work fine and you wont break the engine or any component with the change and should work unless the change is too deep inside the engine.
Good luck with your projects!
Guimo
Edit: Updated screenshot. Wasnt clear enough. Now shows the Equipment button and some improvements.
This was the last week for the prototype stage of Warscale. I'm completely happy with the progress achieved since my first blog and even when there is still a lot of work to do, I feel fairly optimistic. Let me show you some screens of the current state of the game.
The first screen is the Login screen. There is a hole where the Warscale logo should go. I'm still looking for a suitable new logo. The background it from a chinese artist who I'm trying to get an agreement to use his artwork for Warscale.
The second is the server selection screen. All the servers will be shown as regions in the world map and the server information with the server population and ther info (the ping time maybe?) will come up when the mouse moves over the region. The idea is that the servers should also show a difficulty level and will only allow you to enter if you are of a suitable level. As usual, this is just a temporal map.
The third image is the shard general lobby screen. In this screen you can see which people is logged in, you can chat with them and see the current available games. You may create a new game or join an existing game. Also you can enter the army editor, the equipment editor and the store.
As I said, I feel good on how this is going.
What does alpha means?
In software engineering, when a software reaches its alpha state it means that all features are complete and in a controlled enviroment everything should work approximately as in the final product. Of course there will probably exist a lot of bugs to be squashed and the interfaces will probably be replaced or enhanced, but all the subsystems should be operational and correctly linked.
For Warscale, reaching Alpha stage means:
Server changes
a. Improve the handling of connections and disconnections to avoid games crashing or ghost games or players appearing in the client side.
b. Game downloader and updater.
c. Handling at least three shards and multiple games playing at the same time.
d. First stress test. (Will need volunteers here).
Editor changes
a. Correctly integrate all the editors and the store with the server.
b. Improve the shard selection screen.
c. Correctly showing all the available games and allow users to connect and disconnect from the games, set game passwords and the like.
d. Creating at least three types of games based on the same rules but slightly different variations (like reducing the time available to make a move or increasing the ammount of mana each player receives each turn making the game faster).
e. Improve the game lobby which allows the players in a game to gather, chat, change the map, maybe change their selected army and launch the game.
f. Improve the option menues changing all the graphics appropiately.
g. Fix the key binds depending on the game state in order to make the user experience more pleasant.
h. Add sound effect to all the user actions.
i. Add support for background music.
j. Create the background art selection screen.
h. GuiObjectView control capable of handling particles.
Game changes
a. Create more maps. Includes improving graphics.
b. Improve the camera handling.
c. Create Sorceries.
d. Game rewards.
e. In game chat system.
f. Coloured game tracking system.
g. Optional. Store the game in the server so that it may be reviewed later.
As you see, there is work to do and really little time to do it. If you know about flexible and professional Updater which doesnt depend of a PHP/Java server (and is not too costly of course) please tell me. There is a wonderful one in the resources but it needs some modifications in order to get it working as I want. The problem is that the code is in Delphi and my Delphi skills are a bit rusty, maybe one of you may like to help me making this an appropiate downloader. Rewards can be discussed. Please drop me an email if interested.
Before I leave you, let me share something I learned in this time. If you need to update a Torque control/class/object/etc in order to suit your needs for your game, dont modify the original class. Try coppying the class to other file and rename all class names instead. For instance, GuiScrollCtrl may become GuiWSScrollCtrl or GuiObjectView may become GuiWSObjectView. This should work fine and you wont break the engine or any component with the change and should work unless the change is too deep inside the engine.
Good luck with your projects!
Guimo
Edit: Updated screenshot. Wasnt clear enough. Now shows the Equipment button and some improvements.
Torque 3D Owner Michael Chew