Since I am going to continue development of my Ludum Dare entry from this thread, (http://codewalr.us/index.php?topic=79.0) I decided to make a dedicated thread for it.
Here's a link to the Ludum Dare entry, if you wish to try it out: http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=34647 (http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-31/?action=preview&uid=34647)
Chess Wars is a Fire Emblem/Advanced Wars style game themed on Chess. Game play is pretty straightforward if you've never played FE or AW. You play on a grid and each turn you move your units and try to destroy all opposing units on the map. Here's a pretty good video showing gameplay from Fire Emblem: Awakening.
Right now, my game only has two modes: Hero and Army mode. In Hero mode, you control a couple powerful units to destroy the opposing army. In Army mode, you control an opposing army. Here's what it looks like as of this writing:
(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10573921/Screenshots/ChessWars_6.png)
In the future I want to merge the two modes together, where you play mainly as the elite force (FE-style) with supporting army reinforcements (AW-style). I might also up the strategy part of the game where the campaign is dynamic, similar to Total War or Wargame campaigns.
Either way, I'll be updating this thread with progress that I make. Feedback and suggestions are very welcome.
EDIT:
Current Version (0.2.0): http://bit.ly/1xyNbQP (http://bit.ly/1xyNbQP)
I'll have to give this a try when I have some time. I like how it looks so far and it keeps getting better every screenshot. :)
Yup it looks pretty good. :)
It looks pretty nice! I should give it a try at playing or drawing tiles for it someday.
Ok I just tried this and I like the character movement and path arrow graphics so far. The only thing is that you should add some in-game instructions maybe.
Also, this looks like the type of game where Warcraft II style music would fit well :)
Yeah, an ingame tutorial would be nice :P
So far here's my planned list of changes:
-Finish up preliminary sprites for animations
-Mouse support
-Make maps smaller and with view scrolling
-Make content loading dynamic
-Spritesheet support
-Text engine
-More units/unit abilities
-More tiles
-Tile effects
-Capturable tiles
-Scripting engine support
-Custom map loading/saving (important for storyline work)
-Create storyline campaign
Once I get all that done, I can look into making a polished, professional grade game. Music and audio support is already coded into the engine, but I'm in need of musicians and audio engineers before I have any sound.
With dynamic content and tile effects, Will there be autotiles? (To make cliff/lake borders smoother?)
Yes, that is a plan, it shouldn't be too difficult. One idea is to make an intermediary "merger" tile that is rendered overtop the edge connecting the two adjacent tiles. So in that way it should be easy to make the sprites for each tile combination. I'll have to do some research into it and see if there are better ways to do it.
Ok cool to hear :). I had such tiles in Illusiat 12 but they only checked the tile below, not all 9 tiles surrounding it. I was also using 1 different sprite per possibilities.
Btw would you like a sub-forum for this?
I would like to see if I make more progress on this before getting a subforum. At least when there is more of a game rather than engine tech demo.
Ok no problem. :)
So I finally got some of my IRL commitments taken care of and had time to work on Chess Wars. I've implemented mouse controls. You now use the LMB to select and RMB to deselect. WASD and Space have been disabled since they are not needed currently.
Download: http://bit.ly/1xyNbQP
Next up will probably be either further balancing/making armies more manageable, or making larger tiles. I'll likely be working on increasing the tilesize from 32 to 64 once I start making some proper sprites for units and terrain.
Finally, mouse controls. :D I tried the game for longer the other day and it was kinda fun, but having to control each character one by one in army mode took forever. Also yeah I still definitively think the tiles need to be less bright or at least contrast less against each others, because when I played, it was kinda hard to see stuff sometimes. Otherwise, keep up the good work and good luck. :)
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on January 02, 2015, 07:44:52 AM
Finally, mouse controls. :D I tried the game for longer the other day and it was kinda fun, but having to control each character one by one in army mode took forever. Also yeah I still definitively think the tiles need to be less bright or at least contrast less against each others, because when I played, it was kinda hard to see stuff sometimes. Otherwise, keep up the good work and good luck. :)
Part of increasing the tilesize from 32 to 64 will make seeing details much easier. And the new sprites will likely be similar in style to Fire Emblem make them more visible. Additionally, along with the larger tiles, there will be scrolling which will allow me to make variable sized maps instead of the hard coded 25x25 tile map currently in place. Which should help speed things up a bit.
Aah scrolling would definitively be nice. By the way do you have plans to support more standard resolution ratios such as 4:3 and 16:9? Also Fire Emblem style graphics would definitively be nice. As long as it doesn't look too tiled and that the tiles blend with each others (although even NES style like Zelda II world map or Dragon Quest would work).
Why not supporting multiple zoom levels? (1:2, 1:4, 2:1, 4:1, etc)
Quote from: DJ Omnimaga on January 03, 2015, 08:15:00 AM
Aah scrolling would definitively be nice. By the way do you have plans to support more standard resolution ratios such as 4:3 and 16:9? Also Fire Emblem style graphics would definitively be nice. As long as it doesn't look too tiled and that the tiles blend with each others (although even NES style like Zelda II world map or Dragon Quest would work).
The artistic style the game has makes it impossible to prevent a tiled look. Although, it might even benefit from it.
Other resolutions are something I do want to figure out. It shouldn't be /too/ difficult, although there may be an issue with players with larger resolutions seeing more of the map.
Quote from: Eiyeron on January 03, 2015, 07:15:01 PM
Why not supporting multiple zoom levels? (1:2, 1:4, 2:1, 4:1, etc)
I'm going to put something like that in where you can zoom out to see more of the battlefield. It's pretty simple to do in SFML.
Would it be possible to just scale graphics up for people playing on higher resolutions? It wouldn't necessarily look pretty but if the graphics remains pixelated in the first place I guess it wouldn't look as bad.
I could stretch the screen. Although it would look rather weird on 16:9 res screens. I'd rather just keep aspect ratio and let them see more on the screen.
You could always do like FPSes and modern strategy games do: Allow 16:9 users to see a wider part of the game, but still stretch graphics proportionally? It would still be unfair to 4:3 users, but considering it's 2014, if you are still using a 4:3 monitor then it's probably time for an upgrade (unless you mostly play old games)
I have 14:9. Supporting 16:9 would be unfair to me ! D:
Jk, you could add black bars tho.