Fantasy Wars (working title)

Matti · Wed 22/10/2014 00:30:49

Fantasy Wars

(working title)

A turn-based strategy game

Updated April 29, 2016

The game is somewhat similar to Civilization, but in a fantasy setting and less complex (still far more complex than I originally planned

).

Choose one of four factions and play against up to seven other players in a customizable game. Explore the map, choose locations for your settlements, let them grow with enough food supply, gather resources and recruit units. Many buildings, spells and research projects will aid you in your conquest.

Features:

2-8 human or AI players
a customizable map with up to 50*50 tiles
fog of war
4 playable factions
team play
~ 15 unique units per faction
many buildings, spells and research projects
6 resources
changing seasons
random events (like droughts and blizzards)

Stuff to do (April 2016):

- auto-movement for units, so you can send them anywhere on the map
- drawing a lot of units and map tiles
- spell casting
- redo the city managment screen
- finishing the battle(screen)
- making a menu for a customizable game - players, factions, colors, starting positions, mapsize etc.
- music and sound

Adeel · Wed 22/10/2014 00:46:00

Sweet! We'll be getting a AGS made Civ game now! I find it quite interesting because I have recently started playing Civilization V and I find it quite fun.

Stupot · Wed 22/10/2014 01:44:40

Sweet Jeebies. I'll definitely be giving this a whirl.
Good stuff Matti.

selmiak · Wed 22/10/2014 08:17:41

Great idea!
Any chance you'll release a generate random scrollable tilemap with fog of war module after the game?

Matti · Thu 23/10/2014 00:46:36

Thanks guys!

I just implemented 2x2-sized mountains and lakes. They make the terrain much more interesting, I just have to make sure the (slower) units still find their way around them.

I scaled up the other mountains, they'll look better after I've redrawn them.

@ Selmiak: Maybe, I don't know. I'm not sure if it's any good how I've done the whole thing and if it would serve the purpose of a module. But I'll see what I can do.

Matti · Mon 10/11/2014 19:27:47

So I finally decided on all 10 units each for 3 playable factions (Humans, Orcs and Sylvans). I'm not sure if I'll add another one but there's still the neutral AI-only undead faction to do.

Each army consists of up to 6 melee and 3 ranged units. Each unit does melee or ranged physical or magical damage and may have armor or magic resistance. Each unit also has a certain speed and the army's speed is determined by the slowest unit. Armies also have an initiative value equivalent to the speed of all units. The army with the higher initiative strikes first during a battle. Armies gain experience from battles with other armies or neutral creatures on the map. They can level up 3 times and the higher the level the more damage each unit can withstand.

The battle will be turn-based, each unit can decide whether to attack another unit or to block. melee units can only attack units in front of them, ranged units can attack anything. The latter are also safe from melee attacks as long as there's infantry in front of them. Some units also have some special abilities.

I've also changed the minimap to account for the correct colors and the 2*2 tiles.

Matti · Mon 22/06/2015 17:06:56

After taking a break during some winter months I'm working on this again. I finally coded the battle between armies and the game is almost completely playable now. There's still a lot of smaller stuff to code and much drawing left though. And, besides getting rid of some game-breaking bugs, I need to make the game run faster.

Some new screens (still with a lot of placeholders):

AnasAbdin · Tue 23/06/2015 05:59:16

Great work Matti

seeing AGS used for a strategy game is a awesome. What type of music are you planning to use? (MIDI?)

Matti · Tue 23/06/2015 11:17:02

Thanks, Anas.

I haven't thought about the music yet. I can't do it myself anyway, so I'll need someone to do some tunes.

Matti · Mon 04/01/2016 19:11:07

This is taking longer than I thought, but that's mainly because I'm implementing both old discarded ideas and some new ones.

Besides letting the players research quite a few things I did a lot with the map and worked on a random river that spices up the landscape and affects the population in cities. I also decided to let the game cycle through the seasons. The main idea is that you have to gather and store enough food so your city populations can get through the harsh winter. It'll be a lot of work to draw different tiles for each season, but it'll also be nice to look at

A first impression of the winter landscape:

And the river:

Mandle · Tue 05/01/2016 07:19:19

Oh geez...oh crap...oh geez...

THIS LOOKS AMAZING!!!

My number ONE choice for best game EVER made is Civ2 (I've played the ones that came after but they weren't as amazing...And you could go away and cook dinner while the AI made its moves..)

SO! I need to play this game yesterday!!!

Retro Wolf · Tue 05/01/2016 13:07:32

Looking good! You using the flood fill pathfinding algorithm?

Matti · Wed 06/01/2016 13:19:06

@Mandle:
Thank you. I'm glad you like the looks of it. While Civ inspired me to start this project, it won't be too similar and far less complex than Civ. But I'm still having ideas to make it more interesting and I hope you'll like it.

@Retro Wolf:
The main drawback of my game is that I don't use proper pathfinding at all

At an early stage I thought that it would be too complicated and time consuming to get into path finding algorithms and decided to keep the map simple and without large obstacles so that units could go anywhere without the need to find the right path. This is something I begin to regret and I'm still thinking about implementing some path finding as it would be quite cool to have arbitrary land and water masses for example. Maybe I keep it like it is for now and get into it for a next version of the game in case I get enough positive feedback. We'll see.

Matti · Sat 13/02/2016 15:50:11

The season cycle works fine and the cities now produce and store food. You can build farmland during spring and summer, hunt deer and get fish from rivers and lakes. During winter there's almost no food production and the people will eat what is stored. Research will increase the production. The undead faction doesn't need food but has to build graveyards.

I mainly did a lot of drawing over the past month. I've got over 500 sprites by now and probably need twice that much, so it's still a lot of work. I'm also planning to let the player choose scenarios next to the free mode, where the players are allies and have to defend themselves against waves of enemy units (survival), perhaps with heroes or special units that need to survive. I'm working on a desert landscape that will play differently to the normal mode (less food and wood, other units and places). Yay, even more work

I finished most of the wintertiles and it looks like this now:

Units can cross frozen lakes, but sudden blizzards can cease all work and prevent units from moving:

I also worked on other tiles like swamps and lakes:

Stromvin · Sat 13/02/2016 16:15:16

Wow, this looks amazing, especially graphics wise. What resolution are you using/planning. Are the maps randomly generated?
I was working on a tilebased strategy game too for some time, although with a different concept. When i realized that i had no idea how to develop an AI enemy i stopped and went to another project. But im looking forward to test this

Greez Stromvin

Matti · Sat 13/02/2016 17:05:04

Thank you.

I'm using 1024 x 768. The maps are randomly generated. I still need to fiddle around with that to make the starting conditions (e.g. the resource distribution) more balanced.

I worked a lot on AI stuff over the years and think it's fun to try to improve it. The AI in this game is rather mediocre but it's quite sufficient for the purpose (as it doesn't have to make big tactical decisions) and I'm improving it bit by bit.

Stromvin · Sun 14/02/2016 10:01:21

Thx for the information. I wonder how you do bigger maps, as when i tried something like this with ags i always get to the object limit. Then again there are probably much more sophisticated ways to do that than with objects... I just dont know them

AI programming i have definately no clue about, although i tried without any kind of background knowledge... lets just say the Enemy moves seemed rather random

Greez Stromvin

Matti · Sun 14/02/2016 18:24:13

I don't use objects, that wouldn't work well. I use the DrawingSurface functions and draw all the sprites onto the screen. The map size is irrelevant and the room size is just equal to the resolution. But enough of that here

Thanks for the interest.

Stromvin · Mon 15/02/2016 09:16:55

Right, didnt wanna bother you, was just interested

Much luck with completion of this.

Danvzare · Mon 15/02/2016 13:24:50

Wow, this is amazing. A strategy game in AGS! You sir, have my respect.
Not only that, but this actually looks like it will be a lot of fun. You can be sure that I'll play this game when it's released.

CrashPL · Wed 17/02/2016 10:34:58

Another non-adventure game made with AGS? And a strategy game, on top of that? Awesome! Any chances of a demo version anytime soon?

Matti · Fri 19/02/2016 10:48:17

Thanks, Danvzare, I hope you'll like it!

CrashPL: I'm afraid a somewhat polished playable demo will take some time. There's a few (even gamebreaking) bugs that drive me crazy and need to be dealt with. Also, the player can't use spells or research stuff yet (the AI does, though

). And some other smaller things should be finished too before I release anything. I'm not sure how long this all will take, but I'm working a lot at the moment, so keep your hopes up

Matti · Mon 25/04/2016 13:26:05

It has been two busy and very productive months!

During march I did a complete overhaul of the tile graphics, making them much more detailed. It's still unfinished as it's over a hundred sprites per season, but most of it is done.

Then I slightly improved the AI movement and behavior, finally getting rid of the long lasting game-braking bugs I had, yay!

This month I finally implemented a fully working research system. There's four fields of study with different research projects. You can research one project in each area at the same time.

Right now I'm working on the GUIs, their rough look bugged me a lot lately. Next thing I want to do is to redo the city screen, mainly how and what you can build. After that I want to implement spell casting. Then the most important parts of the game will be done!

Here's parts of the summer/fall/winter landscape, haven't done much of the spring tiles yet. The mountains are still placeholders.

The research screen:

Matti · Fri 29/04/2016 12:05:28

I updated the first post, primarily with these screenshots:

Cassiebsg · Fri 29/04/2016 17:47:16

Lovely!

been a while since I played this type of game.
Keep up the great work.

Matti · Sun 01/05/2016 10:37:54

Thank you, Cassiebsg.

I implemented some hotkeys and players can now turn on/off a map grid, city areas and markers for tiles unit can't pass.

Danvzare · Sun 01/05/2016 13:18:13

This game just looks better and better with each new screenshot.
It's going to be brilliant when it's finally released. And those graphics. They're enough to make me drool!

I am legitimately looking forward to this game.

Athanor · Sun 01/05/2016 20:30:34

I'm too looking forward to your game, it looks just beautiful and sounds very interesting! I'd like to play it right away.

Matti · Wed 04/05/2016 11:41:52

Thanks for the nice comments, they sure keep me motivated.

Yes, the graphics have come a long way and I'm satisfied with the result. Right now - after a lot of trial and error - I finally found a way to draw the mountains in a way that pleases me. I also added hills that give a bonus in battle but must be flattened for farmland.

Blondbraid · Wed 04/05/2016 14:22:49

Man, those screenshots really remins me of when I used to play Age of Empires II!

KyriakosCH · Sun 19/06/2016 13:40:34

This looks just EXCELLENT!!!

Btw, your own work already is of top quality so you'd likely not have use of my help, yet I might be able to help with gfx if you need anything. I have created (literally) hundreds of static gfx for CivIII, eg the following ancient greek city set

http://s11.postimg.org/4733til5f/Untitled2.png

(http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?p=5794679#post5794679)

Keep up your Great work!!!

Edit by Darth: non game related img removed

Matti · Wed 05/10/2016 13:08:42

After a summer break I started working on the game again yesterday.

As I'm still not planning to implement real pathfinding (in this version) there won't be continents or islands in the game. But I felt the urge to at least add some sea coasts and there we go. It means more coding and a lot of additional drawing but it's also a lot of fun and really adds to the game.

@ Kyriakos: Many thanks for the kind words!

Danvzare · Wed 05/10/2016 13:30:21

I love water in games like these.

It's one of the main reasons why I didn't like Seven Kingdoms 2. No water you see. Despite the original game actually having water!

And your water, it looks fantastic!
Will it be animated or static?

Matti · Wed 05/10/2016 14:13:31

So far everything on the map is static. I could animate some tiles but it would slow down the performance drastically. Maybe I'll animate some later on and make animations optional, but that's definitely not on my priority list. I agree though that at least animated water would be a nice touch.

Mandle · Wed 05/10/2016 14:36:14

I don't care if the sea is animated or not: That coastline looks beautiful!

Is your real name Slartibartfast by any chance?

Matti · Wed 05/10/2016 15:48:26

Quote from: Mandle on Wed 05/10/2016 14:36:14
Is your real name Slartibartfast by any chance?

I had to google him, but yeah, I see the point

Thanks!

Mandle · Wed 05/10/2016 15:59:59

Quote from: Matti on Wed 05/10/2016 15:48:26
I had to google him

Read the book! It's short and it will change your world! The sequels are pretty good too!

CaesarCub · Wed 05/10/2016 16:04:48

Quote from: Mandle on Wed 05/10/2016 15:59:59
Read the book! It's short and it will change your world! The sequels are pretty good too!

Except Mostly Harmless, you should never read that.

Also, the coastline is lovely

Darth Mandarb · Wed 05/10/2016 16:53:28

Stay on target...

KyriakosCH · Fri 07/10/2016 15:40:00

Quote from: Matti on Wed 05/10/2016 13:08:42
After a summer break I started working on the game again yesterday.

As I'm still not planning to implement real pathfinding (in this version) there won't be continents or islands in the game. But I felt the urge to at least add some sea coasts and there we go. It means more coding and a lot of additional drawing but it's also a lot of fun and really adds to the game.

@ Kyriakos: Many thanks for the kind words!

AWESOME