beautiful work man...honestly
and to think it's not ready yet
| Star Trek Fan Games http://bote2.square7.ch/forum/ |
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| Developer Journal and Screenshots [14 October 2006] http://bote2.square7.ch/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=1154 |
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| Author: | mstrobel [ 10 Jun 2006, 02:58 ] |
| Post subject: | Developer Journal and Screenshots [14 October 2006] |
14 October 2006 It's been a couple months since my last update. Work on the game has continued, usually slowly. This past week has been more productive than usual, and I've made a lot of progress on the UI. I've got the basic galaxy screen mocked up, though some of the statistics are just placeholders. This evening, I implemented fleet route selection with a new pathfinding algorithm. Most of you will be pleased to hear that I have included support for waypoints, so you can Ctrl+Click in multiple sectors to send your fleets on specific routes. I've uploaded a screenshot that shows a fleet route with multiple waypoints that take it through multiple star systems. You can tell by the shape of the route. Note that this UI is not final, and I might change the lines indicating fleet routes to make them more aesthetically pleasing. --- 21 July 2006 It's been a while since I posted an update, so I figured I'd do a quick one now. Since my last post, I spent some more time working on UI components, including the Galaxy Grid control, of which there is a downloadable test in this forum. I then took a couple weeks off to do some brainstorming and re-evaluate some design decisions. I've changed several of the in-game data structures in an attempt to minimize the amount of data that needs to be sent to each player in multiplayer games, thus (hopefully) lowering the multiplayer turn processing time. I started working on the project again last week, though my day job will be keeping me pretty busy until the week of August 21. Still, I hope to spend a lot of time working on the project during the next couple weekends. --- 9 June 2006 I figured I should start a thread to keep people apprised of my work. At the moment, I'm mostly working on backend code, so there's not much to see. However, I have been working on a couple UI elements, including a new map grid. I've included a sneak preview in the screenshot below. Note that this is a work in progress, and it is only meant to demonstrate what the new galaxy grid will look like--the other components (planet view and ship list) are only there for my testing purposes. |
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| Author: | Eon_Janus [ 10 Jun 2006, 03:48 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
beautiful work man...honestly
and to think it's not ready yet
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| Author: | Mastermind [ 10 Jun 2006, 16:26 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
| Author: | panic [ 12 Jun 2006, 01:51 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
Too bad, I liked the hex map from your original work. Looks good, though. |
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| Author: | Matress_of_evil [ 12 Jun 2006, 09:09 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
The hex map was visually nicer, but MStrobel changed it due to overwhelming popular support for the old BOTF square-map. It may be possible that he could release two versions, (One hex-map, the other the square-map) but this would probably take a lot of work, and would likely make multiplayer impossible. |
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| Author: | mstrobel [ 12 Jun 2006, 13:18 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
Not going to happen, Mattress . As you said, it would cause too many complications.
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| Author: | Azhdeen [ 12 Jun 2006, 13:41 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
| Author: | mstrobel [ 12 Jun 2006, 14:16 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
| Author: | iwulff [ 12 Jun 2006, 14:19 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
| Author: | mstrobel [ 12 Jun 2006, 14:37 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
Having a hex grid would not affect the size of the map in terms of total sectors in the galaxy. I actually used the same coordinate system as I am for the square grid. The only changes were to the function used to calculate the distance between two sectors, the code used to enumerate neighboring sectors, and the UI code. As for movement options, the differences tend to cancel out because of the shifted offset of every other row. The reasons for going with the square grid were strictly aesthetic. And they threatened my family  .
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| Author: | iwulff [ 12 Jun 2006, 14:41 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
i was not implying to the size of the map, but merely that it would make the gamestyle more compact. Which is something i don't like. I want to have a feeling that it's a big place out there when playing your game  .
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| Author: | dafedz [ 12 Jun 2006, 19:14 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
Lovely work Mike. Would you like the star list so you can get some proper names (and Trek names) in there..? 
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| Author: | mstrobel [ 12 Jun 2006, 19:29 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
| Author: | dafedz [ 12 Jun 2006, 19:48 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
I've got a list somewhere, I'll sort it out and post it ... |
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| Author: | panic [ 12 Jun 2006, 22:02 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
Who would've imagined that Star Trek fans would be so conservative as to demand a standard old square grid... Ahh well, when I get home from work tonight I'll hoist a brew to the brief glory that was the hex-based future! 
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| Author: | panic [ 12 Jun 2006, 22:07 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
PS - Quick question, mstrobel, are you writing OOP or traditional code? |
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| Author: | mstrobel [ 12 Jun 2006, 22:08 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
| Author: | iwulff [ 13 Jun 2006, 08:39 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
| Author: | dafedz [ 13 Jun 2006, 12:37 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
| Author: | mstrobel [ 13 Jun 2006, 15:55 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
500 names is about how many my current list has, so that's good. Note that it should *not* include the names of any races' home systems. But if it does, you don't have to bother removing them--I can simply remove them in the game code. |
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| Author: | dafedz [ 13 Jun 2006, 18:53 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
Ah right - well I couldn't find the list iwulff mentioned, so this is one I compiled earlier, 700 names roughly - virtually all canon names from Star Trek, plus ones that also appeared in Botf1. Sorry, yes, there are minor race system names included in the list, but they stand out in yellow. I presume there will be a separate list for them, for a number of them do have unique names for their systems which do not reflect race name, ie Beta Renner for the Brekkians etc... |
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| Author: | mstrobel [ 13 Jun 2006, 18:59 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
The Home System for each race is defined in the race database. You must define a star name, and you can optionally define the star type, planet names, sizes, and types. If you don't define any planets, they are all randomly generated. Any details that get left out (size/type/etc) get chosen at random. So you could go as far as to define the entire system (like Sol for Humans), or you could simply specify the star name. |
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| Author: | panic [ 13 Jun 2006, 22:55 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
| Author: | mstrobel [ 14 Jun 2006, 00:14 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
| Author: | panic [ 14 Jun 2006, 03:52 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
Is all of that software freely available? |
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| Author: | mstrobel [ 14 Jun 2006, 03:59 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
Visual C# 2005 Express Edition is freely available. However, I'm not sure if that is capable of loading the WinFX/WPF extensions. It may require Visual Studio 2005. |
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| Author: | iwulff [ 14 Jun 2006, 08:59 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
Here is the list: http://www.botfii.armadafleetcommand.co ... topic&t=27 BUt there is a bug with the klingons... |
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| Author: | panic [ 15 Jun 2006, 06:07 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
OK one last thing. I've been browsing around for a good C/C++ development environment that is: 1. Free 2. Well-supported 3. Able to develop cross-platform and I think I've found a good combo. If you get the lastest Bloodshed DEV-CPP C/C++ distro (available here: ), and then you combine it with the latest version of wxWidgets (available here: ), you get an integrated development environment which can complie cross-platform GUIs to Windows XP, Linux, and Mac without the need for any runtime libraries or .NET mumbo jumbo. Now you don't get a WSIWYG type environment for building your interface, but alas, you can't have everything. Thoughts? |
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| Author: | mstrobel [ 15 Jun 2006, 16:41 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
I think there are Qt toolkits for multiple platforms (Win/Mac/Linux), and there's a good available. You could take a look at that. My knowledge of this area is quite limited, however--I'm mostly a .NET guy. And, of course, there's always Java/Eclipse, but that's not a C/C++ platform. |
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| Author: | dafedz [ 20 Jun 2006, 16:35 ] |
| Post subject: | Re: Developer Journal and Screenshots |
Star list updated in the database. Now the total is about 850 stars - should be enough. All new entries are at the bottom in a new list, coloured in light blue. A few corrections have been made to the spelling of names previously listed, also in blue... All new entries taken from the Trek encyclopedia and a few from astonomy books... cheers |
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