Blog for Frank Bignone at GarageGames.com

Pelorea: Tactical War

Frank Bignone — 2008-07-31T12:39:45+00:00

Pelorea: Tactical War is now heading a new bunch of development as we finished to revamp our game rules. As a consequence our current server is down for maintenance, current game client is broken as new game rules have to be put in place with new controls (mainly due to feedbacks gathered during our internal alpha tests). Moreover porting our previous client to TGEA 1.7.1 (AFX Beta2 release) did not prove to be without any difficulties... Nevertheless, a new mock-up is currently running and I hope to solve remaining issues very soon.

Concerning the art development, we are currently tackling the design of our new civilization, the Borunivians. This civilization will be more civilized than the previous Qanat civilization, as illustrated with the following sketches.

Resource
During last blog, I introduce the new mapping object that we are using in Pelorea: hexagonal display of the map. We released recently a map editor to test this object to our team, in order for our artist to experiment with its different parameters. When its documentation will be finished, I'm planning to release it here for free as a resource (editor & C++ code of the board object). Like that, if some of you will like to use it, I hope that you will be able to enhance it with your own idea and share it too.

Next steps
Team is now fully working toward the release of a public demo for this autumn. Hope our schedule and plan will go as scheduled. Autumn will certainly be an important date for me, on a private level too, but more information to come soon.

Pelorea: Tactical War - Board Map System

Frank Bignone — 2008-05-30T20:17:00+00:00

Intro
Since last time, players that had opportunity to test our alpha release sent us many comments. Among those comments, some were particularly aimed at the fact that the game pace was too slow and also that the game interaction was not showing exactly the design we were looking for: a card board game translated to a rts video game. In order to correct and take into account all those points, we decided to work on few points inside the game: 1) map display, 2) card interaction and 3) simplification of the rules.

HexaBoard map
In order to give a feeling more like a boardgame, and also simplify user interaction with the game, we decided to remove the usual 3D view of your landscape and replace it with a 3D view of a board game. We ended-up with a new object (CBoardMap) which replaces your usual terrain and will display an hexagonal board in 3D. Moreover this class can generate new terrain thanks to its high degree of parametrization.

You can see in the following screenshots some capture from different point of view and also inside the mission editor. The object is very light on the server and most of the work is done on the client. This allow some quick multiplay interaction and no overhead on the network communication between client / server. By the way, if you look carefully you will see some models from different packs available in GG and on the web. All others models (hexacell, hill...) have been done by our artist team under Wu supervision.

For those who already saw my message on the forums, you will notice that I reduce the artefact that was popping on the hexagon model. In fact, I just remove the sunlight / mllight interaction, but you can still notice some artefact in the middle of some models (see here, as I need help on this topic: www.garagegames.com/mg/forums/result.thread.php?qt=75668).

Future
We will now review the other parts of Pelorea that were too much complex and still work on our M4 release in order to put in it all updates of the code. In the meantime, our current alpha is closed and no longer updated as important changes are under process inside our code.

Pelorea: Tactical War Tutorials

Frank Bignone — 2008-05-03T16:14:13+00:00

As the title suggests it, we just finished the tutorial videos of Pelorea: Tactical War which will be linked inside the game application for helping new players with the game controls and mechanisms.

You can take a look of those videos here, if you will like. Do not hesitate to post comments here: bbs.indie-zone.com/index.php?board=4.0 if you are interesting with this game.

Enjoy it!

Do not forget to visit our website too at www.pelorea.com

Pelorea: Tactical Wars news

Frank Bignone — 2008-04-30T15:44:22+00:00

News
MyDreamRPG is now ending, and we did put a demonstration of Pelorea: Tactical Wars available for the jury members. One sad note is that all the items listed to be done during this April were not all fulfilled mainly fue to time availability of our members, and mainly myself for the coding. another point is that we did not want to add some important code modifications in TGEA as we did not yet merge our code with TGEA 1.7, which seems more robust and stable.

Nevertheless, some good work have been accomplished during this month with all features pertaining to deck editor available through our 3D GUI, shown in next screenshot.

Some changes have been put also in the core management of the card deck (but not very visual for the player, as in the core code).

Concerning our artists, they did work a lot to finish some models and also polish some of existing models. They are now working on a new civilization, the Borunivians which with the Qanat civilization will be the second one available for first public release of Pelorea, which brings me to Pelorea future.

Future
Future is quite simple: finish to implement all our defined features; and have a fully playable game with easy access to new players (I have to admit this is not the case at the moment, but we collect some good feedback that will help us to go in the right direction). We are still aiming a first public release this autumn and the pace of development will be keep in order to meet this deadline.

Thanks
I just will like to publicly thanks our team members that are working, and still working, on Pelorea. You can have a full list on our website (www.pelorea.com).

Pelorea: Tactical War news

Frank Bignone — 2008-03-31T05:08:31+00:00

News
Here we go, MyDreamRPG tournament is heading to its end soon and looking back, it looks like our little team worked hard to provide this small demonstration. From the designers to the artists, all team members were working quite hard, but it taught us a lot too. It is always a lot of fun to manage such project, even if sometimes it requires too much time according to your available free time.

Pelorea: Tactical War current release
Our current release (M3.3 for the geeks that like codename) has all the core features which will enable us to build the final game release. It means game mechanisms are working, you can build / destroy / battle / move / gather resources and play your cards. Player can also create their account on our server, and link between DB and game is enabled. However, it does not have all scenarii and game modes that are currently explained in our design document, nevertheless we put a demo mission so our testers were able to try the different game mechanics and send their comments. All this is well shown in the following video:

If you will like to say hello to our team, or just send some words on our bbs; do not hesitate to head to our website which just reopens after two months of maintenance (click on the picture below).

Futures
We are still not in the end of this project, and a lot of stuff need to be done like finishing the second civilization models, optimizing all models with LOD, adding scenarii and game mode inside the game, optimizing it, enhancing the AI, adding few visual effects and nice rendering, adding sfx and music, adding the procedural map creation mechanism, and wiring the numerous little features with our server. Wouahh! Quite a lot in fact, but the nice thing is that we stick with our current design document so avoiding the typical pitfall of adding new unnecessary features during the development process while pushing farther and farther delivery deadlines.

Call for help
We are still looking for some new members that can help us with the following tasks:
- SFX / Music creation
- Visual effects (AFX / TGEA)
- AI programming (TGEA)
- Web development (Ajax / Java / DB / Php)
- Flash development (Flash)
If you wish to help us, just drop an email to myself or post a message on our BBS.

For some self-promotion, if you are interested you can download our game wallpaper by clicking on the picture below.

Pelorea: Tactical Wars news

Frank Bignone — 2008-02-29T15:45:18+00:00

Introduction
Long time since we started the MyDreamRPG contest, and our team spent many times on this project already. It all started with an idea about mixing card game, board game and tactical game inside a computer game. We are now more than happy to have a early alpha code which we can play with.

Current status
So last week, we have put online (for a restricted user-base) our second alpha release (codename M2.2) and are working now on upgrading it for a full multiplayer experience. Indeed, it will not be possible to put for end of March both single and multiplayer mode; and taken into account risk around AI coding, it is wiser to dedicate time on poilishing a multiplayer mode than something else.

You can look at this link (www.scribd.com/doc/2191121/TWar-Client-Guide)in order to have a glimpse of our current documentation, which is still in it early stage but it can give you some glimpse of the different phase of our game.

Future
March will be dedicated to polish a multiplay release of Pelorea: Tactical Wars. Then the following months will be spent on the single play mode and the remaining features covered by our design document and not yet implemented inside the game.

Pelorea: Tactical Wars news

Frank Bignone — 2008-01-30T04:21:59+00:00

News
During the last week, Pelorea: Tactical War project tasks were mainly dedicated to art creation and also code generation. Indeed, some delays have been accumulated on the coding-side which force us to put more attention to that part. On the other hand, art generation process was quite steady and focus only on our first civilization: the Qanats.

Feature outlook
One feature that took us quite a time to put in place is the turn-by-turn combat system. The time spent was merely not because of technical constraints (with the nice exception of client / server synchronisation and also client 'pause' mode), but because of interaction tuning and also game rules coding: one combat turn is divided into multiples sequences where different actions can be triggered. One important point is that we are not working on fancy rendering / visual effect at the moment, with the exception of effects that are linked to game interaction. As an example the next series of screenshot shows the transition between marker unit formation and squad unit formation which is triggered when starting a combat on a specific location: this feature was put in place in order to give a visual feedback on squad health and force in place.

Art materials
As previously outlined our artist team lead bu WuBo is doing a tough and great job in order to produce models, animations and so on for a focus at the moment on the Qanat civilization. As you have certainly noticed from the rendered screenshot or previous model sketches, Qanat civilization is a little bit like a shamanic society with many mongol-like traits. One of their important trait also, is that they have mainly cavalry-like units due to their nomadic-like society. Next picture just shows a rendering of one of their mount.

Server
We have opened our current project server which will serve as a basis for user subscription, shpping of deck card and downloading of available demos / patches and so on. It is currently opened for beta-testing and if you want to give it a try you can go to server.pelorea.com. Please post any comments, bugs or others here support.indie-zone.com as it will help us to manage your remarks correctly.

Misc
The team is currently working hard to meet some of our internal / and also external deadlines. The next few weeks will be interesting as a major milestone should be reached. We are currently lacking some developper resource (i'm almost the only coder on the project), which has some bad effect on our schedule. We are still looking for a good AI coder with a knowledge of torque scripting and mechanism as he/she should be ready to work with not extensive management.

Future
So next milestone is to have or internal alpha testing soon. When our global code base will be finished, it will be time (problably middle of February) to re-iterate on it in order to polish it and start to add some fancy features in addition to the integration of different feedbacks that will be gathered along the test process. This is quite a challenging milestone, but without challenge life will be so boring ^_^

Pelorea: Tactical War news

Frank Bignone — 2007-12-30T10:14:58+00:00

News
Pelorea: Tactical War is now on a steady development phase with the artistic team, development team and designer allocating more time on the project. Of course as our team is made of casual indies, we still need to take into account all other aspects of our life: real job, social hobby and so on.

Current status
Our server-side development is finished and have all the features needed for first release of Pelorea: Tactical War. It took us more time than previously scheduled but at least the server API (based on Java / PHP / SQL) is now more robust and easy to upgrade. The server client interface is based on Ajax mixing Ajax and Flash technologies.

Concerning art development, you can find below a video of the previous model shown in my latest .plan on GarageGames: the skirmisher model.

Game phase (I remind you that our game is a turn-based strategy game) have been all implemented with the exception of the battle resolution phase which will be the next focus of our development.

Future
In the coming days, we will review our design document and project schedule in order to take into account some delays that we have accumulated during the last months. Focus will be on the next milestone which is designed for MyDreamRPG tournament. Main effort will be put on the game client development and integration of the different features.

Wish you all a happy new year and best success for your projects in 2008

News about Pelorea: Tactical War

Frank Bignone — 2007-11-28T08:22:17+00:00

Introduction
This month was full of surprises and changes for our project. First, an ancient member of Dog of Prey team contacts me through MyDreamRPG forum, and I was very pleased to get some news about him as he is a great friend. From times to times, when he will be free he may help us for Pelorea too which is quite good taken into account his skills. Then, due to successful on-going projects Canon has to leave us as he was not able to dedicate any free time for our project. We will like to thanks him for his professional comments and hints. At the end, a strong artist team joined us and lead by Wu Bo, he offers us all a wide range of skills which were missing now inside Pelorea: Tactical War.

Birth of Qanat civilization
Here is an excerpt of the Qanat civilization, the Skirmisher unit: "These are the Qanat hordes' most common units. Extremely mobile, due to their mount, they excel in harassing war, withdrawing from battlefields as fast as they were attacking. The most skilled are able to ride fighting mounts and even for the most experienced ones. They use pole arms as well as projectiles or various C/C weapons."

The next image shows you a part of the development of this unit, and the different iterations for the sketches and also the model. This model and art were done by Wu Bo and his colleagues.

Prototype
The game prototype is under heavy development and takes a large part of my free resources. We are aiming for a new milestone end of December now, which should put in place all the game mechanism with a demonstration level and the available server for registration, card creation and authentication / player history.

I will re-iterate a call for help that I send on some forums. We are looking for one experienced AI developer and also one experienced Java / Ajax developer. For the AI developer, it will be a plus if you already own a license of TGEA.

Misc
You will notice if you go on our website, you will be welcomed with one static page as it is under maintenance. It will be re-opened after the milestone release as it will have the user account part of the website.

Another funny part of a multi-culture team is the need of translation of your design documentation. The next screenshot shows you our wiki site (which is also carbon-copy in a word document), in English and Chinese.

News about Pelorea: Tactical War

Frank Bignone — 2007-10-28T12:25:31+00:00

News
Since last time, we are working on our next milestone which is dedicated to the main gameplay mechanism to be put in the game, that is:
- simultaneous turn-by-turn management
- phase sequence of one turn
- card - unit - player interaction according to phase
- game rules implementation
- battle implementation

The planned schedule is presented in the next figure; but we are realistic enough to know that this schedule may suffer some delays as usual in real life.

Team
Last month was positive regarding our team as we scheduled few telcon, real life meeting and also some new members join us. I'm glad to have Frederic Texier with us, and forthose who do not remember him he was our lead level designer in Dog of Prey few years ago. One 3D modeler also joins us very recently. There are still some issues as it is difficult to share / distribute correctly works in a virtual team. A mailing-list was set-up in order to facilitate information exchange and requests too.

Arts
Canon is still very busy on other projects but he already provided us some nice sketches that should be soon validated by him before giving to our artist for 3D modeling. Here are some preliminary examples of some units that may appear in Pelorea: Tactical War (preliminary sketches still under work).

Tournament
After this second milestone is finished, we will review the different features put in our design documents in order to make a milestone dedicated to MyDreamRPG tournament and to limit the number of features to at least reach this deadline.

Call for help
We are currently looking for one coder with good knowledge in C++ / AI and having an active licence of TGEA. We are also still looking for 2D artists in order to help us for the card design and our GUI design / server GUI.