Advanced Strategic Command: The open source version of Battle Isle!

[CapTVK]

Does anyone remember the PC strategy game Battle Isle?Well, someone made an open source of it and it looks and plays superb!

Introduction
ASC has a long history. The project was start in summer 1994 using Borland Pascal as the programming language. But even then the graphics engine was already available since it was written in 1993 for a simple Tetris clone. In 1995 we started using object orientated programming and in 1996 we converted the whole project to C/C++ (Watcom). We started the port to GCC and Linux in 1999. In autumn 2000 the port to Windows was finished and in winter 2000 the DOS version finally dropped, together with support for the Watcom C/C++ compiler (which doesn't support all features of ANSI C++).
Most parts of ASC itself were written by me (Martin Bickel), while Marc Schellenberger wrote the map editor and Alexander Schäfer wrote the first "small editors". ASC was the project I learned serious programming with. If you look at the source you will see this, both the technical history with its DOS origins and my progress in designing software.

If I started such a project now from scratch I would design it completely different. But we have the project as it is and it is now a game that can be played really well. So rather than starting from scratch it is better to rewrite only one part at a time. This has several benefits:

The game is always playable.
development on the non-programming areas like graphics, sound, units and maps can be done in parallel and all these data work is simultaneously available to both players and programmers. And it can be tested immediately.
Real testing is only possible in real games, which requires a more or less feature-complete game
ASC already has a very solid and much refined gameplay.
So our goal should be to improve ASC one part at once, with frequent releases to keep the players happy :-)

Originally we didn't care about source documentation and modularization. We always preferred writing cool new features instead of cleaning up the code :-)

But the ASC project has reached a point were it can no longer be maintained by a single programmer and I myself don't intend to spend my entire life just working on this single project. But since it would be an enourmous loss for humanity if this project would die :-) my primary goal now is to get the source code into such a shape that others can join the development and hopefully, sometime in the future, take the whole project over.

During the last year, I've spend much time to clean up the source, document and modularize it. While the work is not finished and I intend to further work on it, the code should already be much more accessible now.

Martin Bickel, October 2001

You can get the Linux and Windows versions (binary install) at:
http://www.asc-hq.org/


P.S
The game comes with an editor They also need people who would like to work and test the campaign for ASC 2.

[moomin]

Nice find.

Heading there to check it out.

[CapTVK]

Originally posted by moominparatrooper
Nice find.

Heading there to check it out.

You can also do PBEM, interesting...

8.1 To start a PbeM game:

Game / New-Single Level
Select map
In the Alliance-Dialogbox:
specify who is controlled by a human player ( first column )
set their positions (second column). If several players play on the same computer only a prompt for their passwords appears, but if they are assigned to different computers you have to specify a way for transmitting the data from one computer to another (only "direct file transfer" is implemented yet).
change the names of the players
setup alliances if necessary
OK
If the game is played on several computers a dialog box appears where you can choose which items are checked by checksums. Checksums prevent cheating by improving your units, but they also prevent using an updated unit set during the game. I personally don't use checksums at the moment. So you can just press OK.
The game now asks for the password of the first player. If no password is entered the next time the program will only wait for any key to be pressed.
Make your moves and press end turn when finished.

If the game is played on a single computer, ASC just asks for the password of the next player after the first player ended his turn.
But in an email- or other multi-computer games you now must enter or select a filename to which the game will be saved. If a % is used in the filename the current turn number will be inserted there. If you want to save to a different file after each turn this is quite handy. You will not be prompted to enter a filename after ending the following turns if the file that is going to be written does not exist. So using the % will avoid any unnecessary questions. To change the filename you have to change it in "Game / network / send parameters".
8.2 To continue an email game:
You will have received a file ending with .EML , place it in your ASC directory.
In ASC select Game / Continue Network Game from the Pulldown Menu.
choose a *.EML file to load.
After the end of the turn follow the above instructions as if you just started the game.

[Lemmy]

looks good...i'm downloading now...on a modem