#65274 - JimmyL - Sun Jan 01, 2006 9:04 pm
Hi,
I finally got around to making a webpage for an rts I was working on a little while back. Hopefully I'll find time to fix some of the bugs, and add more content.
You can find it at http://atow.atspace.com.
It's far from complete, currently it has rudimentary AI, a minimap, fog of war, 4 unit and 2 building types among other things.
It doesn't have a very intuitive interface if you haven't played RTS's before, but I think it works quite well once you get used to it.
Jimmy
#65284 - JaJa - Sun Jan 01, 2006 9:57 pm
Very nice.
Keep working on this, it seems very promising.
#65303 - Empyrean - Sun Jan 01, 2006 11:33 pm
I second that sentiment. Keep the good work up!
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#65304 - Wraggster - Sun Jan 01, 2006 11:37 pm
i am a massive RTS fan, keep up the great work ;)
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#65384 - Mchart - Mon Jan 02, 2006 8:15 pm
Very nice, I like the screen swap function.
#65389 - leoedin - Mon Jan 02, 2006 8:46 pm
WOW...a non-turn based strategy game. Thanks man.
The people need a little un-pixeling, but its an amazing start. Hey, you could even invlolve the wifi lib :D
Leo
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#65419 - Sektor - Tue Jan 03, 2006 2:08 am
Nice proof of concept. Lefties may prefer to use the ABXY for scrolling. It's good that you can use L or R + stylus to scroll but it's too fast and imprecise, so I was juggling between stylus and d-pad.
Last edited by Sektor on Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:44 am; edited 1 time in total
#65420 - SeanMon - Tue Jan 03, 2006 2:43 am
Nice work on the game!
I have trouble with creating new Barracks and Houses. I occasionally am able to drag off the letter to build a new House (or Barrack), but most often I end up with the red selection rectangle, and no House. The corner of the rectangle is in the same spot as where the letter was before, so I don't think that it is a calibration issue.
It's the start of a fun game.
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#65428 - JimmyL - Tue Jan 03, 2006 5:27 am
Nice to hear people are liking it :>
Sektor: I just put up a new version with improved lefty support.
SeanMon: That's most likely my bad interface, you probably didn't have enough resources to place more buildings, so the buttons are disabled and there's no indication that they're turned off.
Jimmy
#65432 - dovoto - Tue Jan 03, 2006 6:16 am
very nice..I love RTS too and am looking forward to any updates you plan on doing. Great work.
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#65550 - Wraggster - Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:49 pm
if this turns into a homebrew red alert for the DS that would be awesome
especially if the stylus and touch screen are used to full effect
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#65570 - JaJa - Wed Jan 04, 2006 12:11 am
Judging by current units it will turn into something like AOE.
However it might be pretty simple to just add new sprites.
#65578 - Sektor - Wed Jan 04, 2006 2:03 am
Thanks for the left hand support. What does AToW stand for?
#65579 - JimmyL - Wed Jan 04, 2006 2:30 am
I'm not sure if I like it or if it'll stick but it's "A Touch of War".
I was looking for a name with similar properties to the "Be Sharps" and I figured it was especially appropriate given the current state of the game.
As for the red alert, AOE thing, I played with the scale a bit, and found I like the sprite size the way it is now, hopefully big enough to have detailed units if ever my awesome pixel art gets replaced. And given the limited screen space it's hard to make ranged units that don't shoot or can't see too far offscreen(vertically mostly), so I think I'll stick towards melee ranged armies as much as possible. Although, I haven't really given much thought to unit types and environments, maybe robots, pirates, ninjas, and zombies? wish I had the sprite space...
sorry for the g'ads,
Jimmy
#65591 - dovoto - Wed Jan 04, 2006 5:44 am
| JimmyL wrote: |
wish I had the sprite space...
|
You have room for about 1500 sprites on the main screen (assuming a lot of shared graphics) if you dont mind using 3D quads...just a thought.
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#65631 - JimmyL - Wed Jan 04, 2006 3:26 pm
Actually, what I meant was ram for sprites, I'm actually trying to keep the entire game in ram, with no streaming from the cart, so eventually I might be able to send the game to another ds for single cart play. Even then, I'm really abusing ram right now, with my 16 color sprites stored in 256 color format, but then again, I have 2 frame animations and everything faces 1 direction :>. I really should do the math someday.
As for what you said, Interesting thought, I never considered using the 3d hardware for sprites. Currently each tick, I'm figuring out which objects are on screen, sorting them by their y position, and placing them in OAM, and I'm doing all this using the easiest, most inefficient code to write. I think the game currently drops in framerate when you scroll over an area with tons of trees. And if there are over 255 sprites on screen, I just stop drawing them. If I used 3d quads, I could probably skip the sort, let a z-buffer do the work, and not have any sprite limits.
I just tried a few of the 3d samples in ndslib, and they all crash the emulators, your nehe ones work fine of hardware, and I couldn't get the 2 misc quad ones to work on hw. Does any emu currently do 2d and 3d? I'm not well setup to code/debug on hardware. And can textures be paletted? I'm currently using extended palette's on my sprites for the red and blue teams.
I should be doing research on my own for all this instead of bugging you with questions :>. But thanks for the suggestion.
Jimmy
#65645 - Linkiboy - Wed Jan 04, 2006 7:23 pm
This is nice, very promising.
#65646 - LiraNuna - Wed Jan 04, 2006 7:26 pm
A very addicting game!
I suggest you to get a pixel artist to make this game to look better instead of just be plain awesome fun!
May i recommend Badname? He was looking for you too.
#65669 - tepples - Wed Jan 04, 2006 10:26 pm
| JimmyL wrote: |
| Actually, what I meant was ram for sprites, I'm actually trying to keep the entire game in ram, with no streaming from the cart, so eventually I might be able to send the game to another ds for single cart play. |
What publisher do you have lined up? In order to do DS Download Play where not all systems have FlashMe installed, you'll need a publisher.
| Quote: |
| they all crash the emulators |
Nintendo DS emulators currently aren't even as good as nesticle.
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#65696 - JimmyL - Thu Jan 05, 2006 12:57 am
Ya, got way ahead of myself with that one. I was actually being quite selfish, I've been flashing a bunch of my friends' ds' thinking eventually if I get around to networking my game I could play it with them without having a flashcard each all running the same version of the game. And I also figure if I do attempt to network it, it'll probably be lan only, since coping with internet lag, and trying to keep even 2 people in sync in an rts sounds too much like a full time job.
Also, too bad about the new firmware in the red/etc ds', I'm sure it was just a matter of time before someone figured out how to transmit the wifime boot code from one ds to another, then all you'd need was a flashcard with flashme on it and a screwdriver...
Jimmy
#65698 - tepples - Thu Jan 05, 2006 1:25 am
| JimmyL wrote: |
| I'm sure it was just a matter of time before someone figured out how to transmit the wifime boot code from one ds to another, then all you'd need was a flashcard with flashme on it and a screwdriver... |
I still hold out hope for WiFiMe2.
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#65708 - psimon - Thu Jan 05, 2006 2:50 am
if you're looking for some help with pixel graphics I could help out. I am putting together a quick snapshot of what I've done.
I just put one example up at http://www.psimon.net.au/
email me at psi@my domain above. or reply here i guess.
#65719 - JimmyL - Thu Jan 05, 2006 5:36 am
Thanks for the art offers, but I don't really want to try to improve the look of the game until I lock down the gameplay/interface. I probably won't be spending too much time working on the game, and I'd rather spend the time getting all the technical stuff done, like finding ways to have more units in the game without destroying the framerate, figuring out a way to show visibility in the minimap, taking a look at what Stephen Stair has done with the wifi stuff, and even looking into Dovoto's 3d tutorials which may cause me to change the game's base tech.
I'll probably regret turning down any offers though, my art skills are quite terrible :>
Jimmy
#65721 - psimon - Thu Jan 05, 2006 5:42 am
hehe ok cool.
well if you change your mind you know where to find me.
#66483 - misunoko - Wed Jan 11, 2006 4:04 am
i think you should stick with sprites of 3d would look impresive but sprite will run alot better
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#66513 - Darkflame - Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:33 pm
Its a good idea to have the main inteface and game locked down before getting any spirte artists...after all ,you dont want to give them work that wont be used in the end thing ;)
Still, just make sure its easy to swap stuff around later.
#66655 - badname - Thu Jan 12, 2006 6:39 pm
Hey man JimmyL GREAT game i love the game and the name u gave it. I've been looking for your email a long time untill i finally foudn out you are on the forums! You realy should come on irc, It would be great if you release your code for sertain people who are working on rts ports/remakes.
As you know your game is great but the graphics arent that awsome ;) So here I come in play if you want to I can help you with the graphics. You can view my work at http://www.apollostudio.nl/badname/portfolio.html
PM me your email/msn/icq if you want :)
#70402 - DayDream - Mon Feb 06, 2006 5:02 am
Hi there... saw the game and liked the idea... maybe a slight facelift along these lines might be an idea...
[Images not permitted - Click here to view it]
#70406 - Normmatt - Mon Feb 06, 2006 5:30 am
WOW that looks awesome almost like a professional game
#70407 - DayDream - Mon Feb 06, 2006 5:34 am
Normatt - thanks... but it's just a quick mock based on one of the screenshots... just a bit of playing around -> not yet the professional quality it could have...
#70409 - Eclipse - Mon Feb 06, 2006 6:13 am
That looks REALLY nice, it's a great graphical update, I really hope he chooses to add them to his game :).
#70535 - JimmyL - Tue Feb 07, 2006 3:33 am
Very nice, DayDream. It looks good, you pretty much nailed the design I had in mind for the top screen(except the sword :>), you even left room for the 3rd resource I was going to eventually add in. And of course, my 8x8 block font will need to be one of the first things to go when I really get down to making an interface. Seem to have lost a horse in that pic though :>
Again, great work,
Jimmy
#71627 - leoedin - Mon Feb 13, 2006 8:24 pm
Thats really good pixel artistry. I hope you guys can get down and make a game for the homebrew scene to be proud of :D
A good RTS would really help DS homebrew. Have fun :D
Leo
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