Archive for April, 2009

Progress and Plans

April 13, 2009

I have improved some more interface details. Now, when you select a unit, the borders of its hex become thicker until the unit is deselected again. Another change is that units now turn in the direction you move them, so a tank that has just been moved from west to east will face east, for instance.

I’ve been thinking about announcing an early preview version of the game on some Internet forums for feedback, and which features should be included in that case. I don’t want to send out a crappy game with a bunch of half-finished features, but I don’t want to wait until everything is perfect either. Right now, I’m leaning towards trying to get something simple out late this summer.

The features I think must be included in the preview are:

  • One relatively large and good-looking map, of let’s say Denmark, with shifting terrain etc.
  • There must be some visual indication that a unit can be attacked by the currently selected unit. Panzer General put a cross hair around it if I recall correctly.
  • Deployment and movement of lots of units must work flawlessly since you will be doing it a lot.
  • The bombers must be counterbalanced by for instance air defense units.
  • I must either adjust the hex grid to the terrain or the terrain to the hex grid so that it is always clear if a hex is a land or a sea hex, for instance.

That is it, I think. The other stuff either works already or is not essential. I may be forced to include zoom too when I increase the size of the map if it becomes too hard to get an overview of the field.

The preview version probably wont be much fun to play without sound, animations or surprises, but at least I’ll have something to show. There won’t be anyone to play against anyway, since there is no AI and no server :) You will have to sit next to your opponent.

Bombers can now Bomb

April 10, 2009

I’m back to hacking on the game again. I’ve made the bombers able to attack and polished some small things, like how units and flags are arranged inside hexagons.

As you can see, the map is also bigger now, and the panel is placed at the top of the window and contains more buttons. The “toggle view mode” button changes between air mode and ground mode, ie which unit is scaled down when an aircraft shares hex with a surface unit. I know the buttons look awful but fixing that can wait.

screenshot-090410