Concept: Will code for food

I'm beginning to see why people build tower defence games. Setting up 1 side to move towards another is relatively easy. Implimenting code OOP so that it can be reused for the opposing side tricker.

Basing the mechanics of real life weapons stats the weapons range is too far. Currenly I'm thinking of cutting drones (infantry) out, or cutting units off above destroyer.

Droners - Maybe Unit (infantry)
5.62- 7.62mm (1.8K range), grenades, rpg
Corvette - Smallest unit (akin to humvee)
12mm (2.5K range), Grenades, RPG
Frigate - Medium unit (akin to APC)
25mm (3-7K range), 12mm, TOW
Destroyer - Heavy unit (akin to Tank)
120mm (4-8K range), 2x 12mm,
Cruiser - Capital ship (akin to Frigate)
Long Range Missiles (120K range), 155mm (30k range), 12mm
Battleship - Capital ship (akin to destroyer)
Cruise Missiles (2.5 M range), 300mm, 120mm

In the set up of having each ship have a distinct feel, anything above Destroyer is massively over powered. Its difficult to see how I can rescale to include Drones, without making destroyers seem like mobile artillery. I would have to include some level of stealth sneekiness to smaller units to account for thier size so they stand a chance. Saying that in games like flashpoint anything beyond 1K range is Artillery style combat.

Cover wise, I can't be bothered adding another level of code for environmentals. Units will have shields where they can effectively build thier own cover. Under fire thier shields will degrade and can be mitigated by artillery weapons.

With the keyboard setup, the idea at least is that the game can be more point and click. You can maybe blind fire artillery, focus fire on units.

I kind of want units to have good AI, but that the they are restricted by terms of cost. IE, a unit unless ordered to, will fire the most economical weapon. Although my agressive/defensive setup idea may ease the micro.

That said the timer intercept idea, looks good. Obivious issues, like, if a good and bad unit are spawned at the same time, the game may miss it, if I code the AI too well it may get intercepts up the wazzu. Have to set up a system which tracks if something changes, who immediately is effected it should be doable. Depending how wide I make the map, there could be multiple front lines, so I will keep to 3 lanes.

Trash can - lol I started this idea in 2008
Time based, Isometric game structure - I may return to this but it feels less fluid.
Large Scale map - I'm going to limit to one campaign map.
Save states - I may have to do this or may influence me toning the scope down so I don't have to.
Scoreboard - funny how some say this has to be done, can't remember many that have
Drones - I think corvettes can replace them easily and remove 1 layer of weapons. I can just make a light corvette unit which is akin to infantry feel.
Captial Ships - I'll probably use these more as plot devices than playable units.

Concept: Fleet Commander I (V0.1.3)

After making progress I took some down time to play around with a splash / campaign map. Players will navigate this Map (and a simular Galaxy Map maybe) to move around. The scrolling isometric combat zones are the real time fun part. But all the while maintaining a fluid feel, ie you can zipp around the campaign in your ship and choose which battles you take, with maybe critical ones and extra bonus ones like Mass Effect.


I've jury rigged the combat environment into Isometric, improved coding elements. I got a bunch of hot keys working and a make shift timer. I think I may have to scrap the onEnterFrame idea shifting back to tweens. I aint looked into zoom control and restricting the Isomap movement. I suspect I may need another container MC.

I'll start soon rebuilding the combat engine. This version is a whole bunch of different elements I've had in different files I'm shoving all into one.

Some "working" artwork from itchystudios. He's a professional artist who has like 2 heavily active art blogs one where he keeps saying he's going to make a 'bazzilion' games.

I'm taking inspiration from him and ben olding.

Concept: Infrastructure

I'm mulling over the best way to create an AI and mechanics of the game. It makes sense the forward unit effectively acts as a path finder for the rest, rather than having to calc each units.

Mechanically I'm looking into predetermining/predicting events so the player sees a smooth action whilst its clunking away in the background. This is all around the idea that I can have a turnbased engine... each unit does so much damge per second, travels so far a second etc danger is it could be a bit cunkly. May need to reduce the duration past testing.

Range wise may have to dull down realism, if a unit is really firing at a unit on another lane its noticeably nearer. Could have "previous know target" set up, so even if you loose sight of enemy you could maybe select it and fire a grenade launcher. Same idea behind rally points. Units will all move towards a rally point (if you wish) for convience, although the enemy might bombard that location.

Be funny to see units fall back when injured, most others are very liner forward. Adds an annoying extra elelment, but can see how I could work in assault weapons are best for demoralising rather than outright killing. As I wanted to expand on the morale idea.

Unit Type: I love the idea of infantry, but may have to stick to ships else the level of detail required for visual fluff would be a nightmare.

Improved UI: Made the interface flat bar which makes in look more open. The Iso Grid really struggles with large maps, easier to use good old manual map with attachable details.

Concept - Weapons Range

Each square may need to be 50m, rather than 100m as two ships moving towards each other would close range very fast.
Range is split into good and bad (ranged).

Ironsight
Ironsight accuracy is hard at 350. Anything beyond 400m especially 600m is unacceptable unless there is a large area targets or #binoculars are employed as adjusted fire. (IE It maybe all units have unlimited ammo but firing at unacceptable ranges is considered wastage also it will reveal you more to the enemy.)

4x Scope
Basic scopes increase outter accuracy an extra 100m (to 500m) although the limitations of the rifle remain.

10x Scope
Sniper Scope. May increase total range. Sniper scope greatly improves long range targeting but under 300m the FOV is too narrow to be as effective.

Sniper
What I would more commonly see as a sniper is actually seconday to the Heavy sniper.

7.62mm Marksman/Sniper, (800m~2500m)
You defiantely need a spotter for anything beyond 800m. Adding a 10x scope to a battlerifle makes it a Marksman. IE better accuracy but weapon is still limited.

12.7mm Heavy Sniper, (1800m-2500m)
Designed as both Anti-Light Armour and counter-sniper, the 12mm is the true sniper. However it is heavy, needs to be fired in prone and has limited rate of fire. So its more a support/mortar type role than front line unit. Definately needs spotter to calcuate firing solution.

Concept 5

After building an experiemental combat engine and momentarily noticing that most of these style games occupy 1-7 lanes I realised I need to tone 21 lane scope down at least during testing.

For the present, there are 3 lanes like warfare 1944 where units are actually grouped in 1 MC. As for the World Map: Improved OOP and classed most stuff up so the fla is neater.

Ideas:

Formations/Fleets (Group Control/AI)
A player can choose a formation set up (maybe manually do so). This will mean a player can advance a group of units with scouts, machinegun type units on flanks, do pepper pot 2:2 cover formation type stuff. Maybe have it that more well trained units can do that automatically but not cheap units. This will also ease AI capability / construction.

Players may also group individual units into fleets to ease micro and enable reinforcement type stuff.

MovetoCover (breaking up the warzone in to easy chunks)
I like the idea of having a massive battlefield but it would be over the top both to code and to play. So much like 1944 I will break the map into sections where cover is, then units can move to the next cover, not just move forward like warlords. Maybe have it so units can lay down cover, or indeed if large units get disabled they can then act as cover.

Rally Points
User can define rally points so units will automatically move up if wanted.

CombatEngine
I'm working off infantry concept at the moment. Basically most main weapons can fire upto 8squares but are progressively less effective. (Stuff like Missles, grenade launches, grenades, mortars will have longer ranges.) I'm thinking of stealing an rpg engine ideas to ease things. Have just 4 arcs, and restricting reactions. IE units have to focus on thier lane first and foremost. So unless a unit has another unit infront of them, that unit can't effectively fire onto another lane.

Changing lanes is not available although may be added.

2 of the arcs will be sides, in other games if you get past a unit, thats it you just continue, in this game hopefully the units can attack sideways again based on restrictions. ie maybe some sort of "suprise attack"

Sneakiness/stealth/ fog of war I have to think about.

Concept (4)

The "full" iso structure of the game is restrictive in the sense only one object can move at a time effectively in close quarters.

So going to take a stab at a ben olding/warfare game, with the current iso as the world map.

Basically, I say "basically" the player places units on a map, and off they go to assault the enemy. I envison a mix between total war and men of war. ie players need to hold positions not just advance. More fluid and more fun.

Current Game Engine Version 0.001
movieclip world structure for good and bad guys
moveArray, so I can add objects to tween command

Known issues
there is a delay in adding movieclips which causes variables not to init
may need to have swap depth so faster units can pass slower ones.

trying to figure out how to use tween, so set interval say for 1 second and a tween which moves the units the correct distance for that 1 second, then the timer fires again and the unit moves 1 more space, hopefully seemlessly but last time it went crazy.

ie the game will be turnbased but more fluid for more "fun" gamer appeal

Game Concept (3)

OOP'd more stuff,

characters have UID and OOP'd code
minimap now holds more variables, will need to ref minimap more as Iso needs to be just for show.
enabled faction colours on minimap
improved freezoom, but doesn't recognise lastzoom for first scale change

flash blog

http://tyleralanlarson.com/blog/

labs flash

http://labs.blitzagency.com/?p=377

centre images flash

http://www.kirupa.com/forum/showthread.php?t=302156

papervision

3d max convertor

http://www.feelingsoftware.com/content/view/65/79

http://www.madvertices.com/2008/01/papervision-3d-training-videos.html

scrolling stuff

http://www.actionscript.org/resources/articles/110/3/Scrolling-a-text-box-II/Page3.html

assest manager

http://blog.greensock.com/preloadassetmanageras2/

http://www.webmonkey.com/webmonkey/04/30/index4a_page4.html?tw=multimedia

search array

http://www.kirupa.com/developer/actionscript/finding_values_array.htm

CAROUSEL INTERESTING

http://www.gotoandlearnforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=17340