Warscale - Game creation dialog
by Guimo · 10/05/2008 (3:33 pm) · 3 comments
Hi again to spend precious time of their lives reading this series.
What was planned
This week I was completely focused on improving the game creation process and in the way I found a lot of bugs which were squashed.
One thing I wanted to improve was the game variations. In warscale it is handled by game types and structures. A game type is used to define the number of player and, in single player mode, if you want to fight a complete army or just the server boss. The server boss is a single large creature you must defeat with your army before gaining access to higher level servers. This wont be supported in the firsst version of Warscale but I liked the concept.
For this first stage I added three game types. Duel (2 players), Skirmish (3 players) and War (4 players). Even when you select a 3 player or 4 player game, you are allowed to start the game with less players, the idea is that if you only want to go on a one on one battle, select a duel and dont worry about uninvited guests trying to enter the game.
Also, here are three game structures. Fast, Slow and Strategy. The structure is about the game speed. A Fast game will only give you 10 minutes of total play time on each side. While the turn is in your control, you can take any time to make your moves but if your 10 minutes wear out you lose the game. A Slow game is similar to the Fast game but will give you up to 30 minutes on each side for your moves. A strategy game wont limit your movement time and you can pass the turn when you wish.
I also added a password protection feature. That way only your friends will be able to acess the game provided you tell them the password. That means I need to implement some kind of IM feature. Right now you must use any other IM to tell them the password.
Of course, when you create the game, your army needs to be validated. I created a window to explain why your army cannot join the game. Maybe it has too many or too little units or maybe you have sold some units since you created this army so it is no longer valid. The validator will inform you about any problem.
What wasnt planned
One of the most complex portions was about the dropdown control. Unfortunately the droplist in Torque was unable to handle the requirements I had for the UI and based on previous experience writing GUI libraries I know this is a tricky control with different things that should be handled and even when I wanted to use a droplist I really didnt want to write a full droplist control when it really wasnt mission critical.
So, after thinkering a little, I decided to write my solution using the script. A droplist is basically a label, a button and an overlay or dialog which presents your choices. So after some trials I managed to get it working and feels like a normal dropdown control.
I also finished lots of network bugs and fine tuned some features previously developed.
Screenshots!
This is the game creation dialog. You can see the options and also the drop down showing the army list.
The second screenshot shows the army validation.
The plan for this week
This week is the turn for the game lobby where players gather and chat before the battle. The original design was simpler but, based on my initial sucess with the Equipment editor, now I want to make it more visually interesting. Im planning to display all the players with their equipment so each player is able to see the opponents and their army level even when you really cant see the armies or the equipment bonuses. In the center you will be able to see and change the map (a simple bitmap will do but Handling a full map would be more interesting). And an area for the chat. Some buttons for game Ready and Start will complete the screen. Of course one additional feature will be to allow the /kick command to the chat so that the game owner can remove any undesired player from the game. Here is a sample layout based on a known game.
Ok, lots of coding ahead.
Luck with your projects!
Guimo
What was planned
This week I was completely focused on improving the game creation process and in the way I found a lot of bugs which were squashed.
One thing I wanted to improve was the game variations. In warscale it is handled by game types and structures. A game type is used to define the number of player and, in single player mode, if you want to fight a complete army or just the server boss. The server boss is a single large creature you must defeat with your army before gaining access to higher level servers. This wont be supported in the firsst version of Warscale but I liked the concept.
For this first stage I added three game types. Duel (2 players), Skirmish (3 players) and War (4 players). Even when you select a 3 player or 4 player game, you are allowed to start the game with less players, the idea is that if you only want to go on a one on one battle, select a duel and dont worry about uninvited guests trying to enter the game.
Also, here are three game structures. Fast, Slow and Strategy. The structure is about the game speed. A Fast game will only give you 10 minutes of total play time on each side. While the turn is in your control, you can take any time to make your moves but if your 10 minutes wear out you lose the game. A Slow game is similar to the Fast game but will give you up to 30 minutes on each side for your moves. A strategy game wont limit your movement time and you can pass the turn when you wish.
I also added a password protection feature. That way only your friends will be able to acess the game provided you tell them the password. That means I need to implement some kind of IM feature. Right now you must use any other IM to tell them the password.
Of course, when you create the game, your army needs to be validated. I created a window to explain why your army cannot join the game. Maybe it has too many or too little units or maybe you have sold some units since you created this army so it is no longer valid. The validator will inform you about any problem.
What wasnt planned
One of the most complex portions was about the dropdown control. Unfortunately the droplist in Torque was unable to handle the requirements I had for the UI and based on previous experience writing GUI libraries I know this is a tricky control with different things that should be handled and even when I wanted to use a droplist I really didnt want to write a full droplist control when it really wasnt mission critical.
So, after thinkering a little, I decided to write my solution using the script. A droplist is basically a label, a button and an overlay or dialog which presents your choices. So after some trials I managed to get it working and feels like a normal dropdown control.
I also finished lots of network bugs and fine tuned some features previously developed.
Screenshots!
This is the game creation dialog. You can see the options and also the drop down showing the army list.
The second screenshot shows the army validation.
The plan for this week
This week is the turn for the game lobby where players gather and chat before the battle. The original design was simpler but, based on my initial sucess with the Equipment editor, now I want to make it more visually interesting. Im planning to display all the players with their equipment so each player is able to see the opponents and their army level even when you really cant see the armies or the equipment bonuses. In the center you will be able to see and change the map (a simple bitmap will do but Handling a full map would be more interesting). And an area for the chat. Some buttons for game Ready and Start will complete the screen. Of course one additional feature will be to allow the /kick command to the chat so that the game owner can remove any undesired player from the game. Here is a sample layout based on a known game.
Ok, lots of coding ahead.
Luck with your projects!
Guimo
Torque 3D Owner Apparatus