[ian-reeds-games] Fw: Tactical Battle 1.13 dev 7
- From: "Allan Thompson" <allan1.thompson@xxxxxxx>
- To: "ian-reeds-games@freelist" <ian-reeds-games@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2013 14:04:27 -0500
For those of us who missed it the first time. Here is Ian's post about dev 7,
it is below.
al
"The truth will set you free"
Jesus Christ of Nazareth 33A.D.
----- Original Message -----
From: Ian Reed
To: ian-reeds-games@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Monday, March 04, 2013 1:34 AM
Subject: [ian-reeds-games] Tactical Battle 1.13 dev 7
Hey all!
Well, dev 7 is here and it has the first testable version of multiplayer.
There's a lot it provides right now and a fair number of things that
still need to be done or improved.
Here's an example of what you should currently be able to do:
1 From the main menu press control + shift + M to activate the hidden
multiplayer option.
2 Your first time logging in you will be asked to set your alias.
3 Then you will be connected to the server and can choose to join a game
which lists open games that have not yet started.
4 Or alternatively you can create your own game.
5 The create game menu let's you name your game and let's you choose a map.
6 Once a game is created or joined you are in the Pre Game menu.
7 From here you can activate a player slot to take it as your own or if
you are the game creator you can press shift + A on a slot to toggle
whether it is controlled by artificial intelligence or not. You can also
choose announce players to have those in the game re-announced.
8 Once at least 2 player slots are filled the game creator can start the
game.
9 Once the game is started any player who was not in a player slot will
be booted back to the main multiplayer menu.
10 Now the game has begun and you can play it normally, if it is not
your turn you can examine units and hear when the other player makes
actions.
11 During the multiplayer menu or almost any time in game you can press
shift + enter to type a chat message to send to the other players in
your game, or if not in a game to everyone not in a game.
I'm sure there will be a lot of bugs this first time around. It's
difficult for me to test everything on my own and so I appreciate bug
reports. Just be kind when you give them.
Multiplayer has been a tremendous amount of work and I think it still
has a fair more that needs to be done but I wanted to release it as it's
now at a testable phase.
There is sometimes lag when pressing the create game or start game menu
items.
My recommendation is to only press them once and wait 30 seconds to give
them a chance to respond.
I'm not sure what happens if you press it repeatedly and I haven't
gotten around to implementing something to stop repeated presses in
these situations yet.
Here are some things that I plan on adding in no particular order:
1 The ability to choose which teams you are allied with in the pre game
menu.
This will take the form of a slider, so while on your team you can press
the right or left arrow key to switch from no alliance to alliance 1,
alliance 2 etc.
When the game starts anyone who has the same alliance number as you will
be considered friendly to you by the game.
This is not quite as flexible as the way you can define friends and
enemies in team files which allows for neutral AI players but is simpler
for people to handle when starting a new multiplayer game.
If nuetral units become important in multiplayer I'm sure we can find
another way to set them. Maybe a slider on AI to set it as nuetral to
all players.
2 Sound improvements.
If anyone can send me good sounds for these things I'd appreciate it.
I may have another look at the multimedia sounds you sent me Allan.
Specifically I'd like a nice sound for indicating that a chat message
came in as it might be nice to mute the announcement of messages at
times but still have them available for review.
People who have played swamp will be familiar with that concept.
I'm also thinking of having a very short sound that plays any time
something is being announced that was caused by another player.
Maybe something as short as the current menu wrapping sound.
This may or may not be needed with my next idea.
3 I'm thinking that things that happen due to a remote player should
actually be announced on a separate synthesizer than the main one.
The big problem is that while you're waiting for the other player to
make up their mind about what to do you will probably be double checking
the health of all your units or re-examining the map in other ways so
you have a better mental picture of it.
While doing this it is far too easy to cancel multiplayer messages that
come in and never realize they happened.
If I had a separate synthesizer that either couldn't have it's speech
canceled or could only be cancelled by pressing the right-hand control
key then it would be difficult to miss multiplayer announcements coming in.
Of course they would speak at the same time as your main speech synthesizer.
I'm still debating whether the main speech synthesizer should have it's
speech cancelled as soon as a multiplayer announcement comes in.
Maybe it should since your synthesizer is only announcing extra
information as you move around and examine units or their equipment.
The other benefit to a second synthesizer is that if you have more than
one SAPI voice you can choose a different voice for multiplayer
announcements which further distinguishes them from things that you are
doing locally.
I'm thinking remote actions and chat messages will both be on the second
synthesizer.
4 A new victory and defeat flag system needs to be implemented.
I've only tested with maps that don't have anything but the default
victory flags which means victory when all enemies are defeated and
defeat when all your units are defeated.
I think there needs to be a new victory and defeat system as we will
want to set these flags on a per team basis.
I'm still working through the specifics of how this will work.
5 The ability to load an unfinished multiplayer game.
Since Tactical Battle is turn based it makes sense that even if I get
disconnected the other players can continue taking their turns until it
is my turn again.
I'd like to make it so either through automatic saving or manual saving
people can reconnect to a previously started game to continue it.
6 A number of under the hood and less interesting things.
For instance I intend on replacing the existing serialization and
deserialization solution I'm using with one that will hopefully be better.
I may also introduce passwords if it becomes necessary and I still have
a bit more to do to properly handle banning players.
I wish I didn't have to worry about that but I've been reading a lot of
Aprone's posts lately and it seems to be a major problem for him.
It should be less of a problem for TB since I'm not hosting a single
online world where you accrue experience and reputation, but spammers
and other harrassment could still be an issue.
Due to some of the above unfinished things and the high likelyhood of
bugs, playing multiplayer will not be that enjoyable right now.
But if you'd like to help me move it forward, play test it to make a
good list of bugs that you find so I can work on fixing them.
I'm also open to suggestions about the items I plan on implementing or
other ideas you have about improving the experience.
Here's the link for 1.13 dev 7:
https://dl.dropbox.com/u/43120001/Tactical%20Battle%201.13%20dev%207.zip
Hopefully the 7 will cancel out the 13, smile.
Ian Reed
Other related posts:
- » [ian-reeds-games] Fw: Tactical Battle 1.13 dev 7 - Allan Thompson
