Project - Apolyton game

[Frozzy]

Do you have any hosting space?

[vovan]

Upload space? It's not really abuse of the feature, since the upload is pertinent to the progress of the project started by members of the site on the site.

[Jamski]

http://jamski.free-host.com/nuclearwar210deluxe.zip

Sorry the server is so slow.

-Jam

[vovan]

A little googling turned up this:

http://www.umeweb.com/rcsoftware/nuclearwar/

Apparently, the thing has been rewritten in Java recently...

But it's the same RedCreek Software company...

From the readme:

Because NUCLEAR WAR is beerware, you are required to send a beer to the vice president of R.C Software before one month after the day NUCLEAR WAR was installed. If not the program will destroy your computer. It will turn up the heat in your freezer so all your icecream melts, erase all your channels on your TV. With ultraviolet radiation it will destroy all your CDs. It will give out your phone number to your last girlfriend/boyfriend. It will drink up all your beer and leave your dirty clothes all over the apartment when your mother is coming. It will hide your car keys when you are late. It makes you fall in love with a penguin. It will give you nightmares about circus dwarves. It will go out with your girlfriend/boyfriend behind your back and charge everything on your credit card. It will randomly move around your car in the parking lot so that you can't find it. It will kill your dog. It will give you HIV.

Are you still sure it's okay to distribute it?

[vovan]

Originally posted by Jamski
http://jamski.free-host.com/nuclearwar210deluxe.zip

Sorry the server is so slow.

-Jam

Was plenty fast if you ask me. Took only 9 seconds to dl.

[Jamski]

That's slow

Nah, I meant it took me a long while to UPLOAD, sorry to keep you waiting.

-Jam

[alva]

Neither really works here

[Adagio]

Originally posted by vovan
ADG,
In that case, UR is correct, and making the front-end in Java would be a bit of an overkill. It would be much easier to stamp out your classic PHP+MySQL app (or an ASP.NET+C#+MSSQL app, depending on whether your server is linux or windows-based) and be done with it. In fact, such approach would go well with your idea of having players issue orders at different turns.

That might be correct, but as I said: I don't know any of this, so I can't help programming it, and I don't have the time to learn this...

[Urban Ranger]

PHP is really simple, and so is ASP. Nothing compared to Java.

Really

[Adagio]

I think one of the courses I'll get next year is PHP or something like that (The teachers haven't decided yet)

I hope to start on this project shortly after new year... I had hoped it would have started earlier, but I've got problems with java at the moment

[Urban Ranger]

Java is nice and orthogonal.

[Urban Ranger]

How's this coming along?

[yaroslav]

ADG was asking in the Off-topic about issues installing JVM.

I don't know too much... and I'm not much computer-time free until the 12th day of this month

[Adagio]

Sorry, haven't updated on this thread... I think we can start coding in the middle of next week... I've had a lot of things to do lately...

I'll bring in the connection classes as soon as possible...


I've got JVM working again, so that shouldn't be a problem... I hope...

[vovan]

Is the goal, towards which you think work can start in the middle of next week, more specific and clear now? It's kind of hard to start coding usually when you have only a vague idea about the game you want to achieve.

[Adagio]

If someone else wants to lead this project, feel free... I'm not a project leader

[vovan]

Originally posted by ADG
If someone else wants to lead this project, feel free... I'm not a project leader

No, no, I think it is imperative that you lead the project, since it was your original idea. I think otherwise, you would lose interest soon, and so would the others involved.

I was just wondering if there was a more clear plan now. It just seems to me that we don't yet have a very clear understanding of what it is exactly we want to achieve. I, at least, don't...

I mean, we got the basics: a multiplayer computer version of Nuclear War. But that's not really enough, I think. We need a little more specifications so that the people that write the different parts of the game can later integrate them together easily.

We still need to answer a few questions like:

How is the world going to be represented?
Which version of the rules are we going o use?
How will the players issue orders?
Where will the orders be stored?
Will there be some kind of system to keep track of different stats? Like number of wins for some player and such? Will there be some kind of external data center from which the others could observe games and / or stats?
What else will the player be able to do, in addition to issuing orders? View the dynamically generated map of the world? Contact other players?

These are all crucial to know answers to before starting the coding, so when it gets to it, you get all the functionality you want, and if you happen to add something new, you don't have to rewrite everything.

[Urban Ranger]

I think everything hinges on the rules.

[Adagio]

I'll try make a final set of rules later today

[Adagio]

Originally posted by vovan
How is the world going to be represented?

Not sure what you're talking about. Do you mean the visual part of the game?

Originally posted by vovan
Which version of the rules are we going o use?

The one I posted earlier (I'll repost it in the next post)

Originally posted by vovan
How will the players issue orders?

Player logs in (Name + Password), player chosen his order + target city (if the order requires one), and presses ok.
If the player also issues a spy order, he has the chance to change his orders again.
Spy orders can only be issued on players who has sent in their orders

Originally posted by vovan
Where will the orders be stored?

Not sure about this one, but I was thinking about just having the orders saved in some binary file (Which gets deleted when the turn has ended)... shouldn't be too hard to make.
Not sure if we should keep all orders for all rounds, or just the orders for the current round

Originally posted by vovan
Will there be some kind of system to keep track of different stats? Like number of wins for some player and such?

I haven't thought about this, but it wouldn't be much of a problem to save stats for each player, when a player gets wasted

Originally posted by vovan
What else will the player be able to do, in addition to issuing orders? View the dynamically generated map of the world? Contact other players?

The map wont be that much dynamically, since you can't build new cities... each player just gets some land on this premade map with 5 cities in. The city pictures are dynamically though (different pictures for different size cities)
I have never worked with graphics in java before, so I don't know how to make this... but I guess the picture needs a scollbar, otherwise it would be diffecult to get all cities on one small map
Or maybe we could just have one picture for each player (or for 5 players as in the computer game version), where the player will be able to switch between those two pictures (If there's 10 players that is)

Anyone who's got a better idea about this?


Not sure what you mean with "contact other players". It's not like in Civ where you have to meet the other players first, then declear war on, or ally with them...

Or are you talking about being able to talk to other players who's logged in (Like a chat program) ???

[Adagio]

Weapons:

There exist two different kinds of weapons: Nukes and bombers
Bomber:
A bomber needs to be prepared before they can attack. The startup time is one turn. If the bomber isn’t used the following turn, you need to re-prepare it to use it. A bomber can attack two turns in a row (Unless being countered with a shield)
The bomber exists in 2 versions: (Please come up with a better name)
The weak bomber: When successful it kills a random number of people between 1 & 20
The strong bomber: When successful it kills a random number of people between 15 & 40
Nuke:
A nuke can be fire, without any preparation time, but can only be used once.
There are 4 different nukes: (Don’t know anything about these values, but I believe it was those values used in the game)
10 mgt: When successful it kills a random number of people between 1 & 15
20 mgt: When successful it kills a random number of people between 10 & 25
50 mgt: When successful it kills a random number of people between 20 & 40
100 mgt: When successful it kills a random number of people between 30 & 60

After an attack (For bombers that is after 2nd attack), the weapon is used. All players have a weak bomber, and 2 of 10 mgt nukes, and 1 20 mgt nuke. To get more weapons, you need to build more




Defense:

There’s only one kind of defense, but there exists two different versions:
Simple shield: When used, it manages to destroy 75% of all nukes, and 50% of all bombers
Advanced shield: When used, it manages to destroy 85% of all nukes, and 75% of all bombers

This works like the weapon system: When using one, you lose one, though more can be built in the factory.

The % of chance of success is based on some random number between 1 and 100. If the # is lower than the %, the defense worked as it should





Factory:

A factory takes one turn to ‘do its job’. During this turn, it builds a random number of weapons/defense (How exactly this works, should we talk about… not sure about it)
A factory output could look like this:
1 x 10 mgt nuke
3 x Simple defense
2 x Strong bombers

The computer games factory is very random: Sometimes you get one 10 mgt nuke, while some times you get enough weapons to win the whole game… The randomness should defently (sp?) get tuned down




Spy:

The spy system should more or less work than in the forum game. Maybe with the exception, it’s not possible to spy on a player who haven’t issued an order yet (But no changes to the sabotage order)






Propaganda:

When doing propaganda on a specific city, you get a number of its citizens to one of your cities (A random city of yours). You can get all citizens in specific city (Making this city ‘wasted’)
This number is based on:
-Randomness
-How many times you’ve attacked this player (The more times, the fewer citizens)
-How many times you’ve used propaganda on this player (The more times, the fewer citizens)

If a player before you destroyed target city before your turn, you get nothing
There’s a small chance a propaganda has a side-effect: You lose a random number of citizens from a random city of yours, to target city.
This number is based on the same as above, though with a ‘the more times, the higher risk’ instead






Bonus:

Not sure if we should include this or not. Just going to mention this, since it was in the game

Each turn there’s a minor chance (Based solely on randomness), a random player gets a small bonus… or anti-bonus:
This bonus could be like getting more people in a random city (By a baby-boom), or maybe one of your cities loses some citizens to some alien abduction… and stuff like that…
They were pretty funny, but might screw up the game too much… What do you think?










Any questions?

[Adagio]

Here's the first files for the game...

There's not much in them yet... it's only the connection code for the Server part.

Here's a list of the files (And what I believe should be coded in the different files): (Files attached to post)

Server: The class that holds all the connection information and such

Connection_controller_interface: An Interface, which should be located on both sides (With this Interface, the Client side knows which methods it can use)

Connection_controller: This class file implements to above interface. Whenever a client calls a method, it goes through this file, which then sends the information to the necesary class files

Files we need:

File_handler: Takes care of saving/loading all types of files

Connection: On the Client side, this keeps the connection to the Server alive, and sends all method calls to the Server side

GUI: Not much to say... it's the graphical user interface... it sends method calls to Connection.class




Anything I missed?





Tomorow I'll start on the File_handler class, if I get any time to do it tomorow... loading/saving files is pretty important I think

[yaroslav]

I missed your Januray return, ADG

I'll have a detailed look on that thread tomorrow or in Sunday (it's too late in Spain right now)

[Adagio]

I created two new files today:

GameInfo: Contains all information about a game... well, almost all information, the history part doesn't contain everything... Basicly all information in this object is loaded from the savegame, and is saved to the save file again...

File_handler: Saves all information in above class into a binary file.
I've only created the saveGame method at present time, which is untested.


The next parts of the game I'll create is the load and start new game feature...

[Adagio]

I (finally) wrote a little more code for the game, though it's not that much... time to get some


I just made a tester class for the Client side, which creates and loads a game
There's an error during load game, which I haven't got fixed yet... will take a better look at it tomorow, hoping I can find the error...

[Jamski]

I can't open .rars ADG (silly WinRar gives me problems always) but I bet the problem is a case sensitivity error (almost all my bad code is for that reason) so its always the first thing I check over.

-Jam

[Adagio]

Here's a zip version...

[Adagio]

Updated:

I got the save/load part working (I believe). I just wrote ++ to the wrong variables

[Adagio]

Originally posted by self biased
ummm i designed the layout of my blog. so yeah. GUI. thingie.

If you're still interested in doing the GUI, it wont be long until we need to get to that part...

Here's my idea on how I see how the GUI could look like... feel free to come up with a better idea


In the center of the GUI, there's one picture, which should contain the map for 1 (or 2) players nation(s). The cities should be (of course) have a static position (for each player), while the cities has different pictures depending on size of city (All city pictures should be transparent, if possible).
When chosing a nuke/propaganda, you can click on an enemy players city on the picture (as a target)
All different orders are placed in some menu in the left side of the screen, while the right side is a list of how many nukes/bombers/defense you have
The bottom part of the screen is a simple text-box with information on what have happened during the last turn ("Player X nukes y number of citizens from city Q from player W")

The top part could be a counter, so the players knows how long until next turn...

[vovan]

Hey, ADG,

I just downloaded the latest piece of code and checked it out. There's some good progress you have been making there. Keep it up.