Fantasy Wars (working title)

Started by Matti, Wed 22/10/2014 00:30:49

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Matti

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

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. :cheesy:

Stupot

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

selmiak

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

Matti

#4
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

#5
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

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

Great work Matti ;-D seeing AGS used for a strategy game is a awesome. What type of music are you planning to use? (MIDI?)

Matti

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

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

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

Looking good! You using the flood fill pathfinding algorithm?

Matti

@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

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

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
<iframe src="https://itch.io/embed/42168?linkback=true" width="552" height="167" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Matti

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

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
<iframe src="https://itch.io/embed/42168?linkback=true" width="552" height="167" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Matti

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

Right, didnt wanna bother you, was just interested ;)
Much luck with completion of this.
<iframe src="https://itch.io/embed/42168?linkback=true" width="552" height="167" frameborder="0"></iframe>

Danvzare

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. :-D

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