Something I’m working on myself.
Air group creation is in, as are tooltips everywhere! (Even some which don’t currently display for reasons which mystify me.)
It probably won’t happen tonight, since my vacation internet is sloth incarnate, but I’m downloading export templates so I can build a distributable version of the game so far. If you’re interested in poking around the aircraft and carrier design tools, give me a poke via PM and I’ll send it around when I have it ready.
I’ve fixed some nagging UI and save/load problems, and all the tooltips work now, and I figured out exporting to executable and whatnot, so progress is good. As I wrap up work on the escort designer, I find myself faced with some philosophical questions about what sort of end product I want.
I’ve more or less settled on one-minute time steps a la Rule the Waves/Steam and Iron: although I like the idea of having to wait out dive bombers in real time, I don’t (by choice) have the resolution of platform information required to simulate that kind of temporal resolution. What I haven’t decided yet is how much information and control I want to give to the player.
I have two competing impulses: first, I could go for a carrier strategy game. The player gets direct control over air group operations aboard carriers, deciding which planes to ready, when to bring them to the deck, which targets to launch them against, and when to launch them.
Second, I could go for a carrier admiral game: the player has access to information about air group readiness, but interacts with his carriers by a strike planner and a CAP planner, setting overall numbers and carrier contributions, but letting the carrier captains figure out the timing.
The former seems more interesting to me personally, and gives the player more to do: since, historically, carrier task force commanders had little contact with strikes in flight, there isn’t much to occupy them between launching and recovering. The latter seems more likely to capture the grand strategy, and better fits the timescale I’ve selected: admirals’ decisions take effect over hours, not minutes.
Thoughts?
Make the carrier strategy game and leave the admiral/grand strategy part for a sequel/expansion. ;)
EDIT: or the other way around. ;)
Using the words ‘grand strategy’ was a bit misleading on my part, sorry. What I meant is that there are two distinct pictures of a carrier battle: the admiral’s and the carrier captain’s. The admiral doesn’t concern himself with the nitty gritty of the carrier captain’s strike preparation; he’s mostly thinking about scouting, interpreting sighting reports, picking strike targets, and deciding when the flight decks should switch from launch to recovery.
The carrier captain, on the other hand, has to worry about keeping his CAP fresh, about the carrier’s course relative to the wind, and about how hangar operations are progressing. The carrier strategy game has the player in both roles. The carrier admiral game leaves the carrier captain stuff to the computer.
That said, I guess I need more or less the same code and UI either way.
I got what you meant. For me, starting with the “closer-to-tactical” view and moving to the larger view in an expansion/sequel seems to make sense. Or the other way around.
BTW, I have messed with Godot a good bit. If you need help let me know. ;)
For sure. (You know not what you’ve unleashed! :-P)
With escort design done, all three major design bits are done, less tootip corrections, UI fixes, &c.
The new background image (Saratoga, interwar) is from the US Navy, and therefore known to be in the public domain. <.< The difference in relative sizes of UI elements comes from some work toward resolution independence. (It would still be rough for full-size 4K, but it’s more able to adapt to a wide variety of desktop resolutions now.)
I have an idea for doing maps which may end up being either smart or remarkably silly; we’ll see how it goes over the course of my train ride home tomorrow. I feel like I’m getting close to some sort of vaguely playable prototype, which is exciting news. Doing all of this random design UI stuff first has made me a little more comfortable with Godot, so that I’m at a little less of a loss as far as figuring out the rest of the structure goes.
I apologize for monopolizing the thread; I’m not quite to the point where I want to start a new one. Getting closer day by day, though:
Though a bit plane-jane, there’s now a map with boundaries and a grid (the light squares are 100km, the heavier squares 1000km), functional if imperfect zoom-to-cursor, some room reserved for a UI, and most importantly, a growing framework for placing map objects and moving them around. I’m enjoying the UI challenge so far: I never changed Godot’s default resolution of 1024x600, and if I can fit a usable interface into that size, I’ve probably achieved my design goal of an accessible game.
In ‘decisions that may come back to haunt me, but which make for easier prototyping’, as it stands now, the ‘map’ is actually just a flat background. Scale lines, boundaries, and map objects are drawn on, and as the viewport into the simulated world changes, they’re drawn in different places. This does make an actual map a little more difficult, since I would have to add some system for tiling, but it saves me having to do tiles right now.
Next on my list: do the work required to get air groups on-map, then get cracking on task force/flight deck management UI. The pace from here on out will likely be more measured, since I’m no longer on vacation and have some other coding commitments rapidly approaching. That said, I’m happy with my progress, and having the framework of the world done opens the door to a lot of different ways forward.
Well, this is due to hit early access right now. Really enjoyed Ultimate General: Gettysburg.
Early Access price will be $29.99. For some territories price will differ based on Valve policies and suggestions.
What’s new this time around? Looks like more than one battle. Is there a strategic layer?
How the campaign will work is a bit of a mystery right now. Anyone been playing a pre-EA version?
This is the first I’ve heard of this new Ultimate General game. It sounds fun! Like you, I really enjoyed (and learned from) the Gettysburg game. I’ve played lots of boardgame treatments of Gettysburg, but that computer game really did a nice job of modeling the hilly terrain, which you don’t “feel” as well when playing a boardgame.
I don’t have any inside info on how the campaign works. The Steam page says: “Campaign fully depends on player actions and battle results. Historical battles can also be played separately.” It goes on to talk about promotions for your leaders, unit management, etc. All of that sounds vaguely like the “Order of Battle” style of campaign, but I could be wrong.
I’m also looking forward to the next game in the “Strategic Command” series, “Strategic Command WWII in Europe”, due out from Matrix Games this coming Thursday.
I guess the Matrix holiday sale is coming soonish, so I’m saving some pennies for that.
This is very tempting. I liked the earlier iterations of the series, and the designer is pretty solid. The look of this one is nice, and I’m always a sucker for a grand strategy treatment like this. I’m just not sure I have it in me to focus on something like this like I used to. But it is quite tempting.
Ditto here for SCWW2iE… I tried watching some videos but I’m too impatient to sit through them :)
I remember seeing the devs post last year about looking at Antietam for the next Ultimate General. Apparently they decided to just go whole-hog on the entire war.
I grabbed it last night. Seems to be more of the same Ultimate General goodness. The AI is as brutal as you’d expect from this team, and it could almost certainly benefit from personality selection like in UG:Gettysburg. It has a good sense of the battlefield, and will happily find ways to turn your flank if you get too heavily engaged.
As it stands, the difficulty is quite high, at least in the ridiculously ahistorical tutorial/first mission. (Did you know that the Battle of Philippi featured a Confederate armored train?) The second phase of the mission involves holding poor terrain against about two times as many Confederate soldiers (on normal difficulty). I tried on normal first and got crushed, then tried on easy and found it just about right in terms of toughness.
Beyond that, it’s what you’d expect.
This looks interesting, and the boxed version comes with a huge hardcover manual (I think, seen pictures of it but no mention if that is the manual that actually comes with it). Anyone played it?
So, i’ve won that one several times on normal.
I think it might be a bug or some quirk of game mechanics but the snap defensive positions like the towns and walls are not providing as much cover as actually plopping down your brigade in town. If you put a brigade in town it is very difficult for the weak confederate brigades to do much damage and if they’re in the open they’ll get shredded, especially if you have artillery there.
Cover is really really important in this game as is getting your arty in good and close.
I bought it and am downloading now. I’ll post some impressions soon.
