Tactics Pompster Online - 1.4 - WIP

[teletubo]

Hello folks. I am releasing the first version of the game that a friend and I have been working in the past months.
The game is a tactics/strategy in the styles of Final Fantasy Tactics / X com .

In this first version you can battle online against other player and/or the AI, alone or in a tag match.

Here's a screenshot of the game :





Heres the java webstart link :
http://sites.google.com/site/tacticspompsteronline/Home/tpo14.jnlp?attredirects=0

For the next versions we will implement character creation and persistency, new classes, skills and maps.

ps though I've never posted much in this forum, it helped me a lot with stuff like performance, and buffering.Thaknk you guys !

[Eli Delventhal]

I've never heard of webstart 1.5 ignoring memory. I can't run the game because I have a Mac and can't run a bat.

[teletubo]

demonpants,

I read it there:

http://lists.apple.com/archives/Java-dev/2005/Nov/msg00349.html

Some of my friends tested it with java webstart and they always got a memory overflow and the game hanged.

I may be missing some point, but packing into a zip solved my problems.

You can just download the zip and run the .jar with 256 mb of memory (if you run with the default 128, it'll crash as soon as the battle begins)

Games published by our own members! Go get 'em!

[Hansdampf]

Works fine here. I entered a battle and got killed after a few rounds. I found it hard to realize what was going on, I could click on each (not my own) char and I think the movement range was shown. Maybe put a marker over the active player. Good work so far

[gouessej]

I've never heard of webstart 1.5 ignoring memory. I can't run the game because I have a Mac and can't run a bat.

I agree with you. teletubo, please show me your settings of memory, I'm going to compare them with mine.
In my JNLP file, I do this:

<j2se version="1.6+" href="http://java.sun.com/products/autodl/j2se" initial-heap-size="32m" max-heap-size="256m"/>

In command line, I do this:

java -Djava.library.path="libs/lwjgl_linux_libs" -Xmx128000000 -Xms128000000 -jar game.jar

In ANT, I do this:

<jvmarg value="-Xmx1536m"/>

[teletubo]

this is how I was doing with Java Web Start

    <j2se href="http://java.sun.com/products/autodl/j2se" version="1.4+" max-heap-size="256m"/>

[teletubo]

Hello .
I am posting now the java webstart version . I think I've found the error in my jnlp . Thanks for the help, guys .

here's the link :

http://sites.google.com/site/tacticspompsteronline/Home/tpo.jnlp?attredirects=0

Feedback , comments, and bugs, would be VERY welcome, since it's my first online application and any strange behavior you find please tell me !

[shatterblast]

As a simple critique, I think it played okay.  It was a little slow for each character to take actions and animate, but I don't know if that is because of client to server connections.  I didn't experience any crashes so it appeared stable.  I would suggest maybe doing away with the black outlines for the terrain.  It could help to darken the side textures in turn, but it's just an idea.  Good job!   

[Xyle]

Well done, I agree with the speed. If theres somewhere to speed it up a bit, I'd def look into it. Overall, very nice. The GUI looks great and I like the overall idea.

[Markus_Persson]

Can't connect to the server. It's almost certainly because of firewall issues here at work.

I'd love to see a full size screenshot, it looks great.

Games published by our own members! Go get 'em!

[teletubo]

About the speed issues, I can definitely speed up the AI - I give them a little delay before each action, I thought that would make the human players feel more comfortable - I guess it was the opposite ! I'll change this is next version .
I'll see what we can do about the lines - when we removed the it became very confusing to understand the map, sicne there where no limiting between the bricks , but maybe with shadowing we can solve this.

Markus, I've just checked the server and it's up and running. I guess it's really your firewall . I reposted a larger version of the screenshot, I tought I had posted a thumbnail to the larger image, but I actually just posted the thumbnail, my bad.

Thanks for the feedback so far, more iswelcome !

[h3ckboy]

I couldnt connect either.

I am at school though :/.


I am curious how you got a server going on google sites.

I used to use it but there was not any php so:(.

[userek]

Doesn't run here

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NullPointerException    at OnlineStuff.TPO.GUI.music.MidiPlayer.load(MidiPlayer.java:27)    at OnlineStuff.TPO.GUI.GUITest.<init>(GUITest.java:91)    at OnlineStuff.TPO.GUI.GUITest$1.run(GUITest.java:28)    at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(InvocationEvent.java:209)    at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:597)    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(EventDispatchThread.java:269)    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(EventDispatchThread.java:184)    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:174)    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:169)    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:161)    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:122) Exception in thread "AWT-EventQueue-0" java.lang.NullPointerException    at OnlineStuff.TPO.GUI.music.MidiPlayer.play(MidiPlayer.java:42)    at OnlineStuff.TPO.GUI.GUITest.<init>(GUITest.java:93)    at OnlineStuff.TPO.GUI.GUITest$1.run(GUITest.java:28)    at java.awt.event.InvocationEvent.dispatch(InvocationEvent.java:209)    at java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:597)    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(EventDispatchThread.java:269)    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(EventDispatchThread.java:184)    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:174)    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:169)    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:161)    at java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:122)

[teletubo]

h3ckboy, I don't have a server running in google sites. I rent a small unix server in http://vpslink.com/ . It's really cheap but you have to configure everything from the scratch .


userek, that's weird, I coud not reproduce this problem here. Can you tell which OS and java version you are running ? Did you run directly from the webstart ?

[h3ckboy]

ok, cause I was thinking, wowo for me gogole sites SUCKED

[shatterblast]

If you can speed up the AI response easily, I would suggest a 15% or so speed tweak.  I don't mind waiting a second for each character to take its time to individually animate and then wait before cycling to the next.  I think that sort of thing tends to go with the RPG tactics genre I suppose.  As a tiny little nitpick, the red number for damage seemed to take the longest.  If you continue much into the project, I would also suggest maybe putting the "minus health value" animation to execute right before a character's swing animation.  It's just an idea.  The game still looks pretty decent overall.

[h3ckboy]

I played it again, it is fun.

something that annoyed me though: when you choose wait, it just keeps moving the bar at the same rate. could it jsut empty the bar, or speed it up?

[dishmoth]

It ran fine for me for about five minutes, and then hung.  I couldn't get a response from it, and eventually had to kill the process.  Perhaps the connection with the server was lost, but it would have been nice for the client to inform me if that was the case.

As for the game itself, it looks very promising.  But for a first-time player, it's very confusing.  For example:  Which character am I controlling?  Am I controlling one character or a team of characters?  Are all of the other characters trying to attack me, or are some attacking each other?  What do all those stats down the right-hand side mean?  What do the T, B and H buttons do?  How come I was able to move and attack this turn, but last turn I was only able to move?  How do I cancel an attack command when I realise that there aren't any enemies in range?  Is there any way of regaining health?  What do the trees do?

As it stands, you have to figure out the game's rules through trial and error, against a time limit, while other characters are attacking you!

For future versions of the game, I'd focus on giving the player lots of feedback on what actions are possible, and what the consequences are.  And a training level or two wouldn't hurt!  As a rule of thumb, a game is always ten times harder to play than its creator thinks it is.

Good luck on the project.  Potentially it could be really good!
Simon

[teletubo]

shatterblast, I'll take your idea in speeding up the damage number displaying. This can be modified quite easily .

h3ckboy, when you choose wait, you have to choose the waiting direction afterwards . I think you were missing this point. As soon as you choose the waiting direction your turn is skipped. (the direction which the attack comes from can influence the hit percent).

dismoth, This hang up is probably a null pointer lost somewhere in the renderizer . I'll try to find it, thank you for the feedback.
I think you're right about the learning process. Though some of the questions you made could be answered typing "/help" in the game, the game rules could not . I think I forgot the fact that not everyone played this genre of game before.

For the long term, I plan to write an account system where you can create and customize your characters, and a quest system. The first one or two quests being a tutorial is a good idea .


Thanks all for the suggestions and critiques,  they are always welcome !

[teletubo]

okay folks , we were not planning to release an update right now, but since we wanted to run for the JavaOne showcase, we will release this version .

The main modifications are
-some showstopper bugs corrected-
-speedup in the game flow
-blinking indication of current player
-more organized units distribution in the map
-4 scenarios to be selected
-some new skills

the quest system and "cut scenes" (which allow a story mode and tutorial) are almost complete, but we will hopefully include it in the next release.

That's it for now, we hope to get some feedback and if you experience a crash or something like that, please report it here !

this is the link to the new version :
http://sites.google.com/site/tacticspompsteronline/Home/tpo14.jnlp?attredirects=0

and this is a screenshot of a new scenario, "Death cliff"  :
(in the first post you can see the scenario "The wall")


p.s. I have tested with java 1.5, so I have downgraded the webstart requirement to 1.5

cheers !

[gouessej]

Hi!

I have given it a try, it was really fine even though I'm not fan of turn-based games. There was only one annoying thing, sometimes when I wanted to select an action, the camera was not centered on the concerned character.

[Darrin]

Hiya,

I'm a giant turn based fan.  This seems like an amazing start.   Here are a few suggestions.

--Agree hard to tell who moving and why.  Need some icons.
--When all movement is done, no reason to wait for computer.
--Would love to see the health bars of the enemies.
--(this is just a suggestion but I'd skip all the network stuff and just focus on the game)
--Add some story / objectives  kind of Bang!
--Pick a style, fantasy, modern, etc.  Kind of odd having hippies and ogres.
--increase the size of you damage
--perhaps have a combat log to show what works better or worse, attacks from behind.

Very cool stuff.

[teletubo]

Well I was just going to tell to move this to WIP, but then I decided to upload a new version with some new stuff :

-new scenarios
-a pane showing the next characters to act
-some client/server bugs fixed
-a few options added to game (show energy bars, highlight teams, next to act and transparency)
-used Bon Bon Chan's sky generator to add cool clouds in the background

a screenshot of the new version :



-----
@Darrin and gouessej:
thanks for the feedback, they are always welcome .

Now Darrin, thanks for your detailed feedback. here are some answers :

--When all movement is done, no reason to wait for computer.

that was actually a bug, now fixed

--Agree hard to tell who moving and why.  Need some icons.

Now you can see who will be next 6 characters to act (an estimative)
A character acts when its "action bar" is filled. The greater the attribute "sp" (Speed), the quicker it fills, and the less you act, the less "action" tou spend. That is , if you only move and dont attack, this characters turn will come faster. (that's why it's an estimative, I cannot predict what players will do)

--Add some story / objectives  kind of Bang!

We're working on that, and also on a sort of in-game tutorial to clarify the kind of stuff like the above explanation.


new link :

http://sites.google.com/site/tacticspompsteronline/Home/tpo14.jnlp?attredirects=0

More feedback and testing are welcome !
Cheers

[Sagusa]

Cool game!
How much time a create game ? Do you one create a game? use engines ?
Sorry for my bad English.

[teletubo]

Hello Sagusa,
thanks for playing .
 
I'm working on this game since November last year or so. It is being written by a friend of mine and I , and we don't use any engines, we use only Java2D .

--PS : for those who have played and faced any crash or strange behavior, please post it here, and if possible, post the file "tpolog.txt", located in your browser folder .
Looking at the server log I identified some stuff which may be caused by a client crash, but no one reported anything about crashes here . Please don't be shy !

Thanks in advance