Conquer - LWJGL Turnbased Strategy

[Warren_Head]

Yes, I just tried it. Selecting destination planet if that planet is yours does not work. Pressing End to submit all to a native planet also doesn't work.
And I'm getting better at it, I see it really depends on how much planets are around your first and the first planets of your opponents. I guess sofar I have always had them around the cpu players which really made the game a lot more difficult. Spreading these other planets out is a way of setting the difficulty methinks. Perhaps you could gradually increase the difficulty as the player progresses through them, although I think it will be a lot of work getting it right and not worth the hassle.

[kul_th_las]

The flashing is quite good. I suppose it could be a little brighter, but it looks fine on my monitor.

What I was hoping, actually, was that the flash would be continuous. However, what you've got now is still a huge step ahead, THANKS! Dont' know how you're rendering this thing, maybe only once per turn, or when one of the panels are moved around?

[Malohkan]

@Warren_Head: very good thinking!  That's an especially important comment because I want to make this an online-multiplayer game and it would suck to have the game determined by an off-balance map.  I'll work on a way to determine value of initial positions to try and balance out the games, or tilt them in one's favor if you're looking to set difficulty.

@kul_th_las: the image is brighter now.  I don't want to have it continuously flashing because I think that'll get a little ugly espeically when a lot happens in a turn.  Instead, I'll make it flash once when the turn completes, and once whenever you hit ctrl+d.  I would use ctrl+f for "flash" but that's already used to toggle FPS display, so d for "display" is what it'll be for now   If you guys have another suggestion that you think would be better I'll most likely take it.

I did a LOT of work to the controls so everything with the mouse and keyboard should be very intuitive now.  Essentially what I did was play a lot of games and click what I thought should do things, and if it didn't work, I fixed it in the code   Man I wish I could do that with all the games I play...   So try it now!  You should be able to play the game with the keyboard pretty well.  The only catch is you have to click to give the GridBoard focus.

Let me know what you think!

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[kul_th_las]

Hm. Now that you mention it, I think the Ctrl+D for a "flash" would be ideal.

I'm enjoying the keyboard controls now. Though I don't use them exclusively, I find myself using both the mouse and keyboard at the same time - it feels pretty natural (well, I have been playing the game for a while now).

BTW, is there a reason that planets with names such as "B#" or "%" only display letters, and no symbols in their name? Are you planning to change this behavior?

Can't wait for online play! Fantastic work!

[Malohkan]

All planet names should be arrangements of letters and numbers right now.  For one, I want it to be easy to reach them with keyboard control.  And two... do I have a two?  No I think I just have that one reason   If you have special characters all over it'd be harder to hit the one you want on the keyboard.  That make sense?

[kul_th_las]

Yup, makes sense. BTW, tried multi-planet selection for the first time yesterday. Brilliant! Works great.

----
BUG in keyboard controls:

Alright, so you can press a letter/number to select a planet, and then TAB to the various planets that start with that letter/number. But, at least on OS X, if you press TAB before hitting an initial letter/number, a Web Start error dialog comes up "Cannot launch Conquer". When you acknowledge this dialog the game crashes.

[Malohkan]

thanks for finding that!  It's been fixed.  Happy gaming

What should I do next?

[CaptainJester]

thanks for finding that!  It's been fixed.  Happy gaming

What should I do next?

How about a way to boost ship production?

Something like every 10 ships boosts production by 1% to a max of say 25% or 50% or something.

This would change strategy somewhat for moving fleets around.

[kul_th_las]

Alright, here's a few suggestions for the UI:

1) Ctrl+D does the flash, and that's cool, but it also does multi-planet selection of planets that start with "D" when it probably ought to be a separate and distinct command. So, rather than rewrite your input code (which I figure is causing the multi action trigger), how about moving the flash function to the F1 key. Maybe move the FPS counter display to another "F" key.

2) A new window (perhaps replacing the console) with the following features:

-Total ships vs. Per-turn production
-Number of ships stationed on planets vs. number in transit vs. total ships
-Total ship power (perhaps sum numShips*killRatio for every fleet and planet)
-Power distribution across planets, per player

All of this information is, again, available via the console or by doing some manual math on the information already available to the player, and so the balance of the game should not be affected, just the player's ability to leverage this information more effectively.

I'll draw up some diagrams of what I think this stuff could look like and post them this weekend.

3) Oh, and I've started to get an itch for a drag-selection feature. When I'm playing large, dense games it'd be nice to be able to select 10+ planets at once, with a single drag of the mouse. Perhaps having to hold down the "Shift" key to enable this (so that it's distinct from the map scrolling feature). Or better yet, do a right-mouse-button for drag-selection, and keep the scrolling on the left-mouse-button. OS X players, such as myself, with only 1 mouse button already know how to do the Mac equivalent of a right-mouse-click.

I'm also playing the game on an XP box at home. Can't say enough about this game - I'm really having a good time playing it! For it's simplicity of design, it's one of the best games I've ever played.

[Malohkan]

@CaptainJester:  I'm definitely scheming something along those lines.  Right now I think I may have a perpetual single player mode with some story and objective to it.  Depending on a round's performance, you might acquire points to be used in adjusting production and kill ratio of planets you own.  That's what's currently floating in my head

@kul_th_las:
1) done!  F1 does the flash.  F2 does the FPS toggle, and it's also in the Options menu to toggle.

3) done!  Shift-click and drag to select multiples.  If you already have some selected, in the same fashion that you have to hold ctrl to select additional planets, ctrl+shift+clicking will let you drag and select additional planets.

Games published by our own members! Check 'em out!

[kul_th_las]

Brilliant! Brilliant!

Alright, another small request. Can you make both the main "Enter" key, and the one on the number pad trigger the same thing in the UI. I find, after pressing "End" to send all ships from planet(s) that on some keyboards (since I'm playing it on both Mac & Windows) it's easier/more natural to press the NumPad "Enter" key than the primary one on the keyboard. Besides, they often logically do the same thing in any number of other programs.

Those diagrams are forthcoming.

[Malohkan]

Done!  I look forward to the diagrams!

[CaptainJester]

A couple of suggestions:

1.  Create some sort of scanner system.  Any planet that you control can scan out to a short distance.  Say the distance a ship could travel in one turn.  This way you can get an idea of enemy ship movements.

2.  You could simulate a technology system without complexity.  As time goes on in the game, ship production speeds up.  As well ship speed gets faster and scanner range increases.  You could also increase the base ship production of each planet.

[kul_th_las]

These aren't very pretty, but you'll get the idea.

Explaination:



1) A diagram window, relative to each player. This window always displays the information for the current human player's turn. This window is intended to replace the console. For debugging purposes, I suppose you should keep the console around, but perhaps it could be turned off by default, and activated with the "~" key, or another "F" key.

On a player's turn, it shows them "Total number of ships on planets" - i.e. the number of that player's ships currently stationed on planets, and available for movement/attack.

Ships in transit - a percentage of the total number of ships that player owns (stationed + in transit) that are currently in transit from one planet to another

The first graph shows a comparison of "Total ships on planets" between the current player (green), and the two opponents (red and yellow, in this case).

The next part shows total planetary firepower, that is: numShipsOnPlanets*averageKillRatio
The reason for only comparing ships that are stationed on planets is because that's the only information currently available to the player about his enemies, given the current UI.

The graph below that shows the comparision from player to player.

"Per-turn production" show the percentage increase of the player's planetary forces, per turn, expressed as a percentage of total planetary power.

All graphs are scaled such that the highest value takes up the entire width of the window, and the other values take up a width of window that is proportional to this max value.











2) The second diagram shows an approximation of the Conquer game represented by diagram #1











3) The third diagram shows power distribution. Each planet has a firepower rating, that is (numShips*killRatio). The relative size/opacity of each disc represents this calculated value, and gives a quick reference to how powerful a force is, in comparison to surrounding planets.


All these values need to be scaled relative to each other so that both small and large scale games will be reasonably displayed.

Any questions, just ask.

[Malohkan]

I've been awfully busy with things, but I do like your idea.  Would you be interested in writing the code for it?   You could play with my gui and create a new Canvas extention that I could plug in.  How's about it?

[kul_th_las]

Hm. Sounds interesting. I'll take a shot at it, how's that?

I've actually been meaning to dig into some OpenGL code, and since I'm already interested in this project, why not?

[kul_th_las]

FYI, for those of you watching this thread:I implemented the power distribution thing. You can toggle it with F3 (well, in the custom build version anyway, not the publicly downloadable one)). I think it needs a bit of visual tweeking still.

 I'll send it off to Malohkan and see what he thinks.

[kul_th_las]

Silly me. I realized that I should probably post some screen shots.

This is the implementation of the Power Distribution diagram from earlier in the thread. The way it's displayed is as follows:
Each planet has a "firepower rating", that is calculated literally as (currPlanet.numShips*currPlanet.killRatio).

So, what you see is the most powerful planet is rendered with the largest/most opaque firepower circle, and the rest of the planets are scaled relative to the most powerful. That is, no matter how large or small the game is, if the most powerful planet has 100 ships, or 1,000,000 ships, the size of the firepower circle doesn't get out of hand. In the experimental build you can toggle this display on/off using F3. I find that it works pretty well, even when multiple powerful planets are close together. It really helps you see sudden power shifts during play.

Another one of the most useful features is when you have a planet with a whole bunch of ships on it, thinking that it's safe, but it's got a small firepower rating; that let's you know, quickly and visually, where the weak points in your defense are. The display updates in real time, and is based on how many ships are actually stationed on the planet. In other words, if the most powerful planet (or any planet for that matter) moves all of its ships out into space, the display instantly updates to represent the shift in power.

Also, neutral planets are NOT rendered with a firepower rating, so as not to reveal their kill ratio before they are owned by anyone. So, same strategy as always, but a little more user friendly.

Feedback welcome.



EDIT : The url where the screen shots were hosted is not longer in service, so I've taken the links out.

[Malohkan]

Thanks to kul_th_las for his clean and great code!  I implemented his changes, and added the feature to the Options menu and also changed the game saving code so that your preference of whether or not to show the power distributions is saved.  The update is live!  Good job kul_th_las!

[kul_th_las]

Alright, the console replacement idea thingy has been getting put off for a while. I do tech support for a school district, see, and with the beginning of the school year it's been crazy. I promise to get back to it some time. Might be a couple of months or more.

Glad to see everyone has the chance to try the new features.

[kul_th_las]

Hm - started to take a look at the Conquer code again, decided to play the game and got this error:

"Unable to launch Conquer", and when I clicked on Details it told me it got a stack overflow

Any ideas Malokhan?

Here's the JavaWS log stuff (I'm running JDK/JRE 5.0 Update 4):

General Tab
An error occurred while launching/running the application.

Title: Conquer
Vendor: GameLizard.com
Category: Unexpected Error

Stack overflow (1283)


Launch File Tab
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<jnlp spec="1.0+" codebase="http://www.gamelizard.com/webstart" href="conquer.jnlp">
   <information>
      <title>Conquer</title>
      <vendor>GameLizard.com</vendor>
      <homepage href="http://www.gamelizard.com" />
      <description>Planet conquest game.</description>
      <icon href="http://www.gamelizard.com/webstart/conquer_icon.gif" kind="default"/>
      <offline-allowed/>
   </information>
   <security>
      <all-permissions/>
   </security>
   <resources>
      <j2se href="http://java.sun.com/products/autodl/j2se" version="1.4+" inital-heap-size="32m" max-heap-size="256m"/>
      <jar href="conquer.jar"/>
      <jar href="conquerResources.jar"/>
      <jar href="lib/lwjgl.jar"/>
      <jar href="lib/lwjgl_util.jar"/>
   </resources>
   <resources os="Windows">
      <j2se href="http://java.sun.com/products/autodl/j2se" version="1.4+"/>
      <nativelib href="gagetimer-native.jar"/>
      <nativelib href="lib/win/lwjgl-native.jar"/>
   </resources>
   <resources os="Linux">
      <nativelib href="lib/linux/lwjgl-native.jar"/>
   </resources>
   <resources os="Mac OS X">
      <nativelib href="lib/mac/lwjgl-native.jar"/>
   </resources>
   <application-desc main-class="conquer.LWJGLRunner">
      <argument>0.5</argument>
   </application-desc>
</jnlp>



Exception Tab
org.lwjgl.opengl.OpenGLException: Stack overflow (1283)
   at org.lwjgl.opengl.Util.checkGLError(Util.java:56)
   at org.lwjgl.opengl.Display.update(Display.java:515)
   at conquer.LWJGLRunner.drawBackbuffer(LWJGLRunner.java:430)
   at conquer.LWJGLRunner.runGame(LWJGLRunner.java:382)
   at conquer.LWJGLRunner.main(LWJGLRunner.java:57)
   at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke0(Native Method)
   at sun.reflect.NativeMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
   at sun.reflect.DelegatingMethodAccessorImpl.invoke(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Unknown Source)
   at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.executeApplication(Unknown Source)
   at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.executeMainClass(Unknown Source)
   at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.continueLaunch(Unknown Source)
   at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.handleApplicationDesc(Unknown Source)
   at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.handleLaunchFile(Unknown Source)
   at com.sun.javaws.Launcher.run(Unknown Source)
   at java.lang.Thread.run(Unknown Source)

[Malohkan]

I fixed it!  It had to do with starting the game with "Show Power Distribution" turned on, which happened if you saved that setting last game.  I fixed the bug and now everyone can play happily!

I've also developed an API for people who want to create their own AI for Conquer.  I'll have to javadoc it and perdy it up before I make it so I can give it out to people for fun.  Look forward to it... someday

[kul_th_las]

Sweet! I've been itching to play this for a while. So, did I totally cause that bug?

So, what's next? I think the ability to save a game in progress, and multiplayer.

It would also be cool to be able to go back-and-forth between the current turn and the previous turns, so you could see a kind of slideshow of the shifting of ships from one place to the next.

Ah, wouldn't it also be great to be able to assign a production waypoint for planets? You know, have a planet automatically send its ships to another specified planet on each turn, thereby setting up supply lines.

Oh, man I can't wait to work on this some more. You still open to having me do some code for it?

[Malohkan]

Ahh you didn't totally cause it... well... kinda   The code involved with the crash was my code, but partly because of how you were using it.  The fix was in my code, yours was doing what I would have had it do.  It just needed a little improvement in the structure

As for saving games in progress, how do you think that should go?  Should it be like... save slots where you can save games?  Or should it just be so that when you close the game and come back, the last state of the game is still there?

Multiplayer I would LOVE to have in the game, but have absolutely no net code experience.

The slide show thing isn't too bad of an idea, but I'm not sure how much use it would really have.  For the most part it would just be a big memory hog to store all of the states of every turn.

I'm not sure if I like the waypoint idea.  For one, it would complicate the game somewhat in having more buttons to do what you can already do.  Also, it encourages leaving a planet more poorly defended.  I would rather myself send ships when I really want to.  Also, with too much of that, you'll just have countless fleets bombarding the screen, and that can not only be an eye sore, but a performance hog as well.

[kul_th_las]

In an unrelated comment, what do you think about getting some of the people who are playing this game together to write a strategy guide?

Multiplayer I would LOVE to have in the game, but have absolutely no net code experience.

Hm, I have some experience, and I'd be willing to do it, but it would be a by-the-book implementation at this point, and lacking in pedal-to-the-metal bandwidth efficiency (though, for most turn based games I suspect it's probably not a big deal at first). I'd almost like to see a build which contains only multiplayer code until all the bugs can be worked out. Unless multiplayer is the most important next feature, in which case I could crank away at that until it was done, and like last time, give you the code I've done, and let you integrate it into the public version when it makes sense to do so (note to self: watch those run on sentences). The nice thing about coding it last time was that I kept a copy of the original code separate from the  copy I was working on, so I knew if I totally borked something that I was safe.

As for saving games in progress, how do you think that should go?  Should it be like... save slots where you can save games?  Or should it just be so that when you close the game and come back, the last state of the game is still there?

For a player like me, this feature goes hand-in-hand with multiplayer. But, you could do it such that multiplayer games can't save a game in progress. We could go in a few different directions with this. I'll work up some detailed ideas on this and post them separately.

The slide show thing isn't too bad of an idea, but I'm not sure how much use it would really have.  For the most part it would just be a big memory hog to store all of the states of every turn.

True, and in some ways this could be done better, perhaps with a simple graph. I like the Standings page as it is, but I'd also like to see it in line graph form (i.e. ship production, ships remaining, and planets remaining all over time, and shown in 3 separate graphs, covering only the last 5-10 turns. Maybe I'll work up some more diagrams for what I've got in mind, and post them for comment.

I'm not sure if I like the waypoint idea.  For one, it would complicate the game somewhat in having more buttons to do what you can already do.  Also, it encourages leaving a planet more poorly defended.  I would rather myself send ships when I really want to.  Also, with too much of that, you'll just have countless fleets bombarding the screen, and that can not only be an eye sore, but a performance hog as well.

Hm, you've definitely got a point about cluttering up the screen. It's one of those features that have come to mind as I play, but certainly not nearly as important (or even necessary) a feature as multiplayer. I'm all for the game automating as much of the play as needed so I can focus on the larger strategy, but I agree that it could turn into an ugly mess.

[Malohkan]

Hmmm that gets me thinking.  I'd definitely then want to have a save feature with multiple slots.  That would be more practical if I introduce a story mode with designed maps and goals and such... woah... but until then, it'd still be nice to have a save feature   Also, when multiplayer support is added and you go to hit the Save, a popup would appear on the other player's screen saying, "Player Bob has requested a save for this game, would you like to save?"  If yes, both players get the save written.  If no, the first player gets a message, "Player Sue rejected the request to save."  That way saves would be synchronized and next time you two connect in a game, then load, you can resume your previous multiplayer battle.  I don't recall seeing any game do this, and they should, because I want that in mine    When net code is in effect, I'll certainly implement this.

As for graphs, I've already implemented a graph that shows planet count per turn, which makes a very neat graph to watch especially when trying to fine tune your AI you're making for fastest conquering of neutral planets   The only reason it's not in the current release is that I can't get the damned scrollbar to behave how it should   I'm having a heck of a time with it.  I have scrollbars working perfectly for so many things, but for some odd reason I just can't make it work for this piece!  I'll figure it out though, and when I do, I'll put it up and then make it more fully featured with checkboxes for various statistics.

I'll contact you again in pm with the updated source so you can resume your play with the code

As for a strategy guide... I'd be flattered.  However I think I should make the game more interesting (hopefully with a story mode) before anyone would really have much to write in a guide.

[CaptainJester]

As the game stands now, I don't think a save is necessary.  It doesn't take more than 15-30 minutes to play a game with 30 planets.  Although I haven't tried a larger game yet. 

Multiplayer would be good.

Could you implement a scanner for planets that you own?  Each planet you own can scan out to 2 turns away to see incoming/passing enemy ships.

[CaptainJester]

I'm not sure if I like the waypoint idea.  For one, it would complicate the game somewhat in having more buttons to do what you can already do.  Also, it encourages leaving a planet more poorly defended.  I would rather myself send ships when I really want to.  Also, with too much of that, you'll just have countless fleets bombarding the screen, and that can not only be an eye sore, but a performance hog as well.

How about if the player could set a threshhold for a planet.  Once the threshhold is reached, then it will move a player set number of ships to a specific planet.

ie.  When planet A reaches 150 ships, move 100 ships to planet F.

This would keep the screen clutter down more, but still allow the player to automate some of the process.

[kul_th_las]

As for saving, I like the idea of proposing a save to all human players, and having them either accept or reject the proposal.

Here's something else I think would be cool. One of the problems with multiplayer strategy games is that if your losing it might be a long, drawn-out loss - boring to play, and you know there's no way you can come back. This phase of the game is pretty boring (even if it's victory-lap time for the winner). So, here's what I think we could do: if a player is in a bad position, and wants to save the game to finish it later, let them offer this to all other human players. If anyone rejects this proposal, give the player who wants to exit the game the option to substitute themselves with an AI player of their choice.

Another alternative is to simply stop the game, give the players points based on their standings (total planets conquered, total ships built, etc.), and place them 1st, 2nd, 3rd and so on, and end the game. With this setup I think you can please most play styles, and people feel as if they get credit for their work.

Now, if we had a high scores table online, and a full blown ranking system, here's what I think could be a cool idea:
So, a player decides they want to leave the game, for whatever reason (they're losing, they have to eat dinner, have to go to work, etc.), but the game is still in progress. What do they do?

The player is presented with the following options, in order:
1) Offer a "save game" to all players, contingent on acceptance from all players. The saved game is set to expire in, say, 1 week. That is, if play does not resume in 1 week, the game is automatically stopped and points awarded (#2 explains this better).
2) If #1 is rejected, offer a "stop game" to all players, that is, just call the game as it is, reward players with points, and consider the game closed
3) If #2 is rejected, and without having to get consensus from anyone, a player my leave the game, but is replaced by an AI of their choice. This allows the players who want to continue to play a chance to do so. At this point, the player who is leaving has their points calculated (as if the game is being stopped), those points are added to their global online standing, and play continues.
4) If the last human player in a game wants to leave, they decide the outcome. Either (1) save the game or (2) stop it. There is no point in (3) replacing the last human player with an AI player.

As for AI players, either:
A) AI players are not ranked, OR
B) Maybe since there's an API to write them, AI players are ranked on their own list - could be cool.

Okay, and if we had a server to store global standings, then this same server could also be used to store all saved games. That way you could locally manage "expired games" and update the global standings as needed. This would not, however, be a game server. That is, it wouldn't have to be used to host actual games (thereby saving on bandwidth). But, if we had a central server, would could also do some cool matchmaking stuff.



So there's some ideas I'm throwing out there.

[kul_th_las]

One more note on global rankings:

I'm usually a fairly casual gamer of the strategy games that I play. It's great that games offer standings and everything, but when you build your player community to anything beyond a couple hundred people, the casual gamers are always going to be at the bottom of the rankings, and that tends to take away some of the fun.

So, I also propose this: we could divide the rankings up into different classes by ranking. Let's say we had a chess-like ranking system that gave everyone a number representing their overall skill. Let's say for the sake of argument, that the ranking score goes from a range of 0-1000 (yes, I know chess rankings go higher). You could break this down into a number of classes - say the 0-99 class, 100-199 class, and so on, so players could feel like they're working to be a the top of their class.

It helps alleviate that sense that,  "I'm #1035 of 15000 players. I'm in the top 10% of all players, but it doesn't feel that exciting because only the top 100 players get listed on the rankings page." I hope you get my meaning here.

Anyhow, there's some more things to chew on.