realm building computer game

[Orchaldir]

Hello!

This is my first post, but I visited the forum in the past few months.

I want to make a realm building computer game and I am currently collecting ideas and designing the system.

Infos about my first prototype(map editor): http://orchaldir.blogspot.com/2009/06/realm-building-prototype.html

About my design(the attached pdf):

I want to start as simple and as abstract as possible, but cover most of the important areas.

Assumptions are limitations to make the first version as small as possible. Later versions will add the missing features. Maybe I will exclude even more features.

Issues are things I am not sure about or have no idea.

Questions:

What do you think about my design?

What do you think about the map pictures?

Did I miss an important part of realm management?

Other sources of information/ideas?

I use: this forum :D, birthright books, Fields of Blood, Empire, A Magical Medieval Society

Do you have Python (http://python.org/) installed? If not, would you?

Thanks for the help.

[Vicente]

Two minor things about the design:

- Provinces go from 0 to 10 (at least in Birthright).
- You say each province has attitude to its own realm and to other realms. Which other realms? (all, neighbours,...). That idea is nice to allow provinces defecting and so on but in Birthright there can be sooo many people involved in a province that it's a little pain :S

Regards!

[Orchaldir]

Thanks Vicente!


- Provinces go from 0 to 10 (at least in Birthright).

Provinces not belonging to a realm have no province level. (= 0)

The game will be heavily influenced by Birthright, but not the same. I will not use the d20 rules for one thing.


- You say each province has attitude to its own realm and to other realms. Which other realms? (all, neighbours,...). That idea is nice to allow provinces defecting and so on but in Birthright there can be sooo many people involved in a province that it's a little pain :S

Thats a good point. Maybe have a standard attitude for allies, enemies and neutrals and only show differing attitudes.

Is there really a need for per-province attitude for other realms?

Project Status:
-I have shortened the feature list of the first version and will soon post an update of the document.
-I will start with a small commadline combat prototype at the weekend.

[Orchaldir]

Here is the updated feature list for version 01. I removed many features, because I want small and fast iterations.

I decided for the simplest combat system possible, because at the moment everything else would needlessly complicate the rest of the game. The prototype is too boring to publish.

Tomorrow I will start programming.

[Vicente]

Here is the updated feature list for version 01. I removed many features, because I want small and fast iterations.

I decided for the simplest combat system possible, because at the moment everything else would needlessly complicate the rest of the game. The prototype is too boring to publish.

Tomorrow I will start programming.

I agree with the simple combat, but because of another reason: if this is going to be a multiplayer game, doing a tactical combat is simply impossible: you can't make the rest of the turn wait for the players to resolve the combat (and you need the players online at the same time). So the only good alternative for tactical combat in MP games is auto-resolve: you can just do the math behind the scenes and show numbers or do a more "visual" simulation like Dominions does (Dominions combat is a nice way of approaching MP tactical combat).

My 2 cents.

[Orchaldir]

Another update:

I just started implementing armies. A problem, I came across, is how do display multiple armies in one province. At the moment I display them as small squares in the color of their realm.

A screenshot! (http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_LsNFm6r1F_M/Sj6geqEoefI/AAAAAAAAAEU/EHvtqSPrtng/s1600-h/Realm+00.png)

You will be able to move them to other provinces by dragging.

What do you think about this?

General: Should I display information on the map or keep it as simple as possible? Or muliple maps?

[Vicente]

Why not showing just a single square? If there are armies from a province, you see a square, the bigger the square, the bigger the army. If you hover over it you can see the composition in a tooltip (to avoid a click). That's a pretty common way of representing armies I think.

[Rey]

Or a vertical bar. From cool blue, through green and orange to hot red to show there is a massive army. Or use a pie. The maximum would be the amount a province can support.

[Mirviriam]

I agree with the hover option - useful in helping people with tips or more information than is needed after they've played once before.

Throw a flag icon with a number on it - then detailed make up reveals on hover.

[Orchaldir]

I will show each army as a square/symbole and the color shows the realm. More infos will be shown per tooltip.

Update: The turn/time system and the gui are more time consuming than planned, but they are the last major things on the todo-list.

[Vicente]

I will show each army as a square/symbole and the color shows the realm. More infos will be shown per tooltip.

Update: The turn/time system and the gui are more time consuming than planned, but they are the last major things on the todo-list.

Programing and designing a good GUI is horrible work. Try to use a GUI framework if you can (nothing is going to save you from the designing work :( ).

[Orchaldir]

Sorry for the spelling mistake, but its late. Maybe I should have posted tomorrow, but I am too exited!

PyRealm 01 is finished!

WARNING: The first few versions won't be playable. okay, Maybe playable, but not fun. I make them to test different features and rules. There is no economy or balance to speed up testing.

Install:

Install Python 2.6 (3.0 and 3.1 should also work)
The programming language.
http://www.python.org/
There is a simple windows installer.

Install pyglet 1.3:
To draw 2d and 3d graphic.
http://pyglet.org/download.html
There is a simple windows installer.

Download PyRealm 01:
http://github.com/Orchaldir/PyRealm/zipball/01

Unpack it.

Start PyRealm 01:
Windows: Double click PyRealm.py in the src folder should work
Linux: open terminal -> go to src folder -> python PyRealm.py

Screenshot (http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_LsNFm6r1F_M/SlOvcIT06TI/AAAAAAAAAEc/Me6CcWfalpw/s1600-h/PyRealm+01.png)

Tutorial:

There is the map window and the terminal.

map window: playing
terminal: infos (instead of a gui)

clicking on a province or an amy will print infos and selecte it.

province selected + key C: create army
army selected + key I(for increase): increase army size
drag army to a neighbour province: move army

key spacebar: next realm or end of turn

If two enemy armies are in the same realm: battle (Bigger army wins.)

Questions:
Does the install work?
Does the game work?
Problems?
Ideas?

Next Version:
battles with more than 2 armies
conquering enemy provinces
move more than one province per turn
roads
gui?

Two movement systems:

1.) complex
each army has movement points
each terrain has movement costs
roads reduce movement costs
weather, race, ... could modify the costs

2.) simple
each terrain is walkable or not
each army can move a number of walkable provinces
roads and races make certain terrains walkable

Which is better?

[Vicente]

I installed Python 3.1 (I already had 2.4 installed), and pyglet 1.1.3 (the latest version, I suppose that's the one you are referring). But when I try to run your code I get an import error:

mypath\PyRealm.py", line 1, in <module>
import pyglet
ImportError: No module named pyglet

So it seems pyglet is not installing correctly. Looks probably like a environment variable, but I'm not a Python guy, so I'm not sure. The machine is a W7 x64 RC1, so maybe it's not supported yet (although if they support Vista it should run on W7).

But you should try to see if there's an easy way to package everything in a single installer for later versions (like using WiX or any other installer system).

[Orchaldir]

It could also be that Python 3.1 ist too new. Released just a few days ago. It is a major change to Python 2.6 and befor. So maybe pyglet 1.3 and Python 3.1 are not compatible.

I will look into package/install systems, but I fear they are to complicated for small releases.