Feedback To Player When Nothing Is Happening

Waiting around, scratching yourself, wondering what the hell the Ai is up to ... if anything? Has it crashed? Locked in a loop? Waiting for input without telling you that it wants you to do something. Who knows?

---------------------------------------------------------

I had noticed occassionally decals would not work as expected but didn't think much of it as it didn't seem related to the stability issues I had been experiencing. I'd ripped out my custom explosion stuff and gone back to using automated functionality, and whilst this had fixed my disappearing decal, it hadn't done anything for stability. Eventually I noticed that things were getting deleted, random things like GUIs, decal data, SFX, and other things which was causing the stability issue.

Now I'd had previous experience of this a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away - and knew that it was trying to clean something up, failing to find it, and then eating something else.

There had been an issue ... located somewhere between the chair and the keyboard ... that had crept in very early at the start. However it hadn't surfaced until 6 or so months later when I'd had the Ai team in and working with near complete functionality.

I was attempting to delete a decal in the Ai's move routine which the Ai didn't even own, when I should have been using the decal management system to simple remove it.

BY ODIN'S HAT! Either extreme crunch or a sudden outbreak of sobriety had caused such a faux pas.

And with that fixed, stability issues disappeared.

So onwards and er ... onwards!

After replacing all my custom explosion stuff - for the umpteenth ruddy time - I'd also rolled back a few other changes which I'd recently made. Ammo packs went back down to their original 5 from changed 10. This means that ammo might need monitoring on the high rate of fire weapons and various rocket/grenade launchers. The fact was packs of 10 rounds really seemed to stop bullets being a resource and I might as well have just gone for infinite ammo - which I very much do not want (apart from in the handfull of hugely expensive rechargeable energy weapons). I'd made various tweaks to weapon and ammo weights, ranges, stopping powers, and scrapped the original idea of grenades exploding at the end of a turn in favour of immediate detonation. There were far too many instances in testing of hurling a frag and then getting shot when trying to step back into cover afterwards - thus making grenades a liability rather than another tool of the arsenal.

I'd sorted out a whole load of Ai related thinky-thinky about equipment, decisions on using grenades, swapping weapons and finding more ammo if they run out. Which all took far too much effort to synchronize and stop them from changing their minds halfway through doing something. Various tweaks to initially equipping them were also made and some dodgy mathematics fixed.

All of which brings me to having the player wait for things.

When one of the player's troops comes under fire during their active turn, control is momentarily removed and then given back when the incoming projectiles have either impacted or burntout their lifespan. During the enemy Ai's turn, there's a lot of waiting around obviously - which does tend to happen in sequential turn based games, in fact it's supposed to happen or it wouldn't be sequentially turn based ... er ... obviously.

So I've developed a camera and information system to give the player feedback when they are in "passive mode" and do not have direct input control. This starts as a basic GUI announcement that it is the opponents turn, and some basic information about what is happening. At it's most basic this is a simple "Hidden Movement" announcement, telling the player that stuff is a-foot, but none of his little chaps can see it.

This progresses to giving feedback on things that are in the field of view of any of the player's troops, such as an enemy going beserk and shooting indescriminately, fleeing in panic, or walking into a booby-trap that the player had placed at the beginning of the battle. The camera moves to whichever trooper is the most relevant, displaying their Name, Rank and Class, and information about what is happening. This can be about that particular trooper being in danger, to returning fire, to viewing something passively such as enemy panic or new enemies spotted. Eventually I'm considering tweaking the "Hidden Movement" part of the passive phase so that the camera shows a random part of the map as scenery, rather than just lingering on the last trooper that had any information to pass on to the player.

All designed to keep the player up-to-date with pertinent information and views of the action during the phase when the player has no control.

And here's some vidya of it all in action. It starts off with me planting a shed-load of booby-traps ... which the Ai then avoids by using dual flanking manouevers ... ah bugger. This just happened to be the tactics it chose, the opponent not having any clue where booby-traps are until unless spotted by a "Recce" or "Sapper" class (Sapper's can defuse booby-traps by walking into them). The enemy do however walk into an IED on either flank and there's a bug displayed in the player info where the name of the viewing trooper is not displayed with the information (since fixed!). At the very end there's a little demo of me fragging the main group of IEDs and watching them set each other off with secondary explosions.

The majority of the video is just gameplay, with an emphasis on the camera and feedback system during the player's passive phase. It features "Stormy" weather type which has visibility of all troops reduced to 100 units. (There are 4 weather types with troop visibility ranging from 300 down to just 50 units/metres).

Next up, finishing off the Ai's decision making about which equipment to use in various situations, having the Ai take more advantage of cover, and use a wider dynamic avoidance rule when moving as they do still tend to knock into each other on corners. Also required is an end of battle screen featuring stats on how each trooper did, their current state, promotions, the chance to recruit new core troops from any deployed militia which did well in the battle, and an overall battle rating.

After that it's about sorting out armoured cavalry (also to give the sapper class something to act against as an equaliser with all of it's explosive class-based weaponry), make sure the whole thing loads and saves correctly, and then it's about time to make some proper maps/battle arenas for the post-alpha game.

Something That Vaguely Resembles A Game ...

 Does exactly what it says on the tin! I've got a full blown ... if rather rough ... battle with the Ai on the go - and it all works! Well, apart form the bits when it crashes - but I'll see about fixing that later.

Well, it took 8 months but it's something that vaguely resembles a game. At least the single battle part is, which will eventually be squeezed into work with the larger Strategy-Flying-Around-Conquering-Stuff part.

But anyhoo, it works "just as planned" ... only rougher 'cos there's various parts which need tweaking, changing or just downright fixing.

I'd struggled for some time ... and pontificated considerably longer ... about how to get the Ai opponent to choose a team of troopers from the available resources of cash, veterans, 6x classes, and class-level based equipment. Initially it seemed easiest to make pre-defined teams with minor variations ... right up to the point when it became clear that this was obviously a rubbish way of doing things.

After a few morale boosting sessions where I charitably lined the Chancellor of the Exchequer's pockets in a country pub ... and trying to kill a seagull that oblitered the procedurally generated algorithm I was dreaming about, it all became quite clear.

I created a simple yet awesome system which procedurally generated an opposing force within the constraints of available cash, veterans and class levels based on weather, strategy, objectives and multiple squad tactics. No, I don't remember how ... it was all a dislocated haze, but then for Stevie, Real Life ™ gets fainter and fainter everyday ... (I find it helps if you say that in a strained and high pitched voice)

So there it is, an Ai team playing to the strengths afforded to them, using one of 8 different tactical approaches. These are fairly regular sort of tactics and are as follows:

1. Extended Line - sweep down across the battlefield, advancing on the enemy ... it worked in the Great War! Oh wait ... no ... no it didn't ...
2. Frontal Assault - group everyone together and go straight for the enemy ... and hope they don't have to many MGs, mortars or anything else that makes a mess out of a large group in open terrain ...
3. Hook and Line Left - central support group with flanking assault group to the left.
4. Hook and Line Right - guess what this is the mirror image of?
5. Horns of the Buffalo - Zulutastic. Dual assault groups flanking on either side with a central support team.
6. Pincer Movement - twin flanking assault groups.
7. Flank Support - twin flanking support groups engaging at range.
8. Skirmish Line - like extended line but made up of long range support gunners, keeping their distance as much as possible.

Needless to say, weather and terrain conditions are taken into account when the Ai are choosing tactics and classes. So if it's pitch black and everyone is tripping over each other in the dark, there's a lot more chance of their being assault groups than support groups, and likewise, if it's a barren, featureless desert with visibility stretching for miles/kilometers/leagues/cubics they're not going to create vast numbers of assault squads armed with pistols. This doesn't mean that they won't occassionally pick a less suitable tactic - just that they are a lot less likely. History is filled with plans which "seemed like a good idea at the time".

Anyhow, as I mentioned, it plays like a game ... except when it doesn't and crashes. Upgrading to the newest version of the engine might help - still using a customized previous version ...

I've still got 4 post-it notes full of bugs to sort out. And the player really does require a lot more feedback on what is happening during the enemy turn. At the moment reactive fire works fine, the camera mvoes to the player's trooper being targeted and positions itself so you can see who is shooting at him. Ideally this also needs to track visible enemies whilst they move. Talking of visible enemies, spotting works fine, showing and hiding opponents as they move in and out of sight, so no rotating the camera around an obstacle to try and spot an opponent that your team members cannot see.

Reactive fire works both ways, requiring the passive team to successfully spot and have enough initiative (based on distance, stance, angle) to either fire first or fire as the opponent moves.

The Tactical-PlayGUI (as opossed to the StrategicOverview-PlayGui) is the only one which still requires to be overhauled, and there's a definite need to highlight the start of the player's next turn as I've spent a while staring at the screen before realising that I had control of my buttons back.

I also need some sort of victory/loser screen detailing what your troops did and what sort of performance you had.

I'd been concerned over a few things and had halved the weight of ammo for fear it was too easy for playesr/Ai to run low. Turns out they don't actually use that much (either human or Ai) in any of my test battles. Also, battles are over a lot quicker than I had expected. Initially I was a bit disturbed at the ease I won my first battle 10-3, but then lost both my next battles 5-10 and 7-10 respectively when the Ai used different tactics and the terrain was less open. With both forces equal it's a fairly nice challenge.

Gah ... enough typing ... video of a battle, with the boring bits edited out. Features plenty of spotting, reactive fire, some healing and some panicking in both teams over the deaths of team-mates.


Easier to see what the hell is going on in HD but you knew that ...



Next to do is improve how the Ai decides how to start each turn, which weapon to go with when they have multiples. They already do pretty well when deciding on grenades or bullets. Currently I have the "Meeting Engagement" gametype working pretty well, but also need Assault and Defence. Also tanks/armoured cavalry needed or the Sapper class isn't going to have too much to do with it's specialized explosives. Finish up my save/load solution and eventually cram it all into the strategy part of the game so that the campaign mode works fully. And of course art ... which all comes last after the damn thing works properly.

Data, Data, Data, 28 Items, Multi-Purpose Ammo, Artillery

Item data overload! All items finally done, at least the data and how they all work in game - still placeholder models ---> Art is last on the list. Also multi-purpose ammunition, for people who are tied of not being able to use similar bullets in multiple weapons.
--------------------------------------------------------

Weapons, items, armour, artillery ... done, finally. Or at least the data and testing for them all it done, if not the final 3D modeled form of them - that's for last on the list of "What Needs To Get Done And In Order To Have Done Everything". So everything is still placeholder in the visual department. No pics this time, but cue vids.

So, here's a quick recap.

There are 6 classes.

Each Class has 4 levels of items.

There's also a "generic" class of 4 items everyone can use without penalty.

Ammunition of a each caliber can be used in any weapon of that caliber.

There are booby traps which can be placed before the battle for the enemy to walk into, and thewse can be detected and captured by the Sapper Class.

Most items are weapons of some form, some are equipment, and some are defensive (like armour).

Light armour is ... er, light. Heavy armour is ... er not light. Stealth armour is camouflaged. Whilst thinking up various defensive equipment for the classes, I also thought it might be fun to have some "non-conventional". I decided on a certain type of armour, which defended the user not by stopping damage, but by reducing accuracy of the firer by dazzling them. For a visual, I decided on some sort of energy shield, and was drawn to the old WW1 battleship "razzle-dazzle" camouflage schemes - only with a bit more colour in it and a moving pattern.


Amongst the variety of standard and conventional weapons I thought up a few exotic ones such as a badly spelt "flammenwaffen" - since renamed Flammenwerfer - a lightning gun that fries things - unless they're in a faraday cage ... say totally metal heavy armour ... in which case they don't do any damage at all - various rifle grenades, portable mortars, flamerockets, sniper rifles and machine-guns ... there was also the Railgun, which punches a hole through everything for 200 metres, reducing damage as it goes.



And artillery, in fact a few different types of artillery, each with different damage, blast radius, accuracy, but also a concussion radius to stun. There are rockets which are all noise and no trousers but scare the hell out of everyone nearby and cause large morale loss and panic. More standard artillery strikes and heavy mortars, guided flame bombs, and also carpet bombing by dirigible.



And for all of this hurty-hurty stuff, I needed a healy-healy system. So aid-kits are dual purpose, healing wounded squad members as you'd expect by increasing health - but also being available to create medivac. I rejigged the damage system so that disabled squad members who are not killed outright will fall wounded and slow bleed to death ... unless you can get someone with an aid-kit to heal them and call in medivac. Eventually they'll be a nice screen for this medivac but right now there isn't. Medivac-ing also boosts everyones morale a little as it's good to see your mates saved to fight another day.



And throw in a shed load of bug fixes and general improvements.

------------------------------------------

My original deadline of completion by 1st January 2012 will be missed by a mile - but I'm still vaguely on course for completed gameplay with placeholder art. After a few rewrites that were costly in time, and the occurance of total burnout around October that caused an end to continuous crunch, it's still not a bad effort and should be completed early in the new year.