Outpost Universe Forums

Projects & Development => Projects => OutpostHD => Topic started by: leeor_net on July 14, 2016, 04:11:55 AM

Title: OutpostHD v0.6.0 Released!
Post by: leeor_net on July 14, 2016, 04:11:55 AM
OutpostHD v0.6.0 is now officially ready for release!

(http://leeor.outpostuniverse.org/ophd/screenshots/0.6.0/ss_01_thumb.png) (http://leeor.outpostuniverse.org/ophd/screenshots/0.6.0/ss_01.png) (http://leeor.outpostuniverse.org/ophd/screenshots/0.6.0/ss_02_thumb.png) (http://leeor.outpostuniverse.org/ophd/screenshots/0.6.0/ss_02.png) (http://leeor.outpostuniverse.org/ophd/screenshots/0.6.0/ss_03_thumb.png) (http://leeor.outpostuniverse.org/ophd/screenshots/0.6.0/ss_03.png) (http://leeor.outpostuniverse.org/ophd/screenshots/0.6.0/ss_04_thumb.png) (http://leeor.outpostuniverse.org/ophd/screenshots/0.6.0/ss_04.png)


What's New

This release was mostly focused on saving and loading games but there are a few other additions too:


Bugs Fixed

Gimme Gimme! Where do I get it?

Head over to the main thread (http://forum.outpost2.net/index.php/topic,5718.0.html) and look for the 'Current Build' section.
Title: Re: OutpostHD v0.6.0 Released!
Post by: Hooman on July 14, 2016, 05:05:05 AM
Congrats on implementing save/load. Now we can all cheat at your game by saving and reloading if something bad happens or we make a mistake.  ;D
Title: Re: OutpostHD v0.6.0 Released!
Post by: leeor_net on July 16, 2016, 10:21:03 AM
Not sure I'd call that cheating but yaasss! :D

The save games are human readable so if someone really wants to cheat they're welcome to.
Title: Re: OutpostHD v0.6.0 Released!
Post by: lordpalandus on July 16, 2016, 12:21:37 PM
Well, as the game is turn based with consequences for your choices, much like old roguelikes, I'm sure Hooman is referring to the cheating tactic "save scumming", which if you don't know what that is, it involves backing up your save file in case you do something wrong (generally dying) and then reloading your save by copying the backup save back to the original save location. As many games will delete your saves when you die, backing them up to another location is an effective way to get around the automatic save file delete with permadeath, thus most people consider save scumming cheating as you overcome a game feature in a way the game developer had wanted to be present in the game to provide challenge. Gives players who use it an unfair advantage over those that don't, thus its often considered cheating.

... Though, for some roguelikes, it almost feels like the game is cheating on the RNG or some game feature seems unfair, and thus sometimes its necessary to save scum to counter the already unfair gameplay. An example I like to use is save scumming for ADOM. There are so many different things that can instant kill you if you lack an item equipped, and thus if you aren't prepared for them, you can die instantly losing hours of progress in what felt like a cheap death. At least if you get cornered and flanked on all sides, it feels fair, as you took too many risks and thus paid the price, but wandering into a dungeon level, not knowing about the Banshee and not having any beeswax, and losing a character you've played for 40 hours just is overkill. Hence, in these "cheaty" games, I like to save scum to make the game a bit more fair. But that is just me.
Title: Re: OutpostHD v0.6.0 Released!
Post by: leeor_net on July 16, 2016, 02:35:56 PM
I can see that, but ultimately as it's a single player game I leave it up to the player. Do they want to be intellectually honest with themselves? No? Do they want to go through the challenge? No? Entirely on them.
Title: Re: OutpostHD v0.6.0 Released!
Post by: Hooman on July 16, 2016, 11:06:32 PM
Quote
The save games are human readable so if someone really wants to cheat they're welcome to.
Ok, now that really is cheating. Geeze, that's what I loved about binary file formats. It at least added some level of challenge and cleverness to cheating.
Title: Re: OutpostHD v0.6.0 Released!
Post by: leeor_net on July 17, 2016, 07:06:38 PM
Well, I could fake it and zip it then save it as a .sav and pretend like it's binary.
Title: Re: OutpostHD v0.6.0 Released!
Post by: Hooman on July 25, 2016, 02:23:03 PM
And that's cheating on the part of the programmer.  ::)
Title: Re: OutpostHD v0.6.0 Released!
Post by: Goof on July 25, 2016, 04:37:34 PM
.... or you could extract the sources from the SVN and tweak the game to start with 10 of each robots and a storage full of each resources.

... Witch is useful to help debug.
Title: Re: OutpostHD v0.6.0 Released!
Post by: UtopiaPlanetia on July 25, 2016, 11:31:32 PM
Personal opinion: Must the remake use the Populous style map? It feels claustrophobic, especially with today's large monitors and screen resolutions, and being spoiled by games that maximize the display area on screen. Age of Empires, for example, started with the Populous clone, but the developers changed the map view to fullscreen.
Title: Re: OutpostHD v0.6.0 Released!
Post by: Hooman on July 25, 2016, 11:54:42 PM
Quote
.... or you could extract the sources from the SVN and tweak the game to start with 10 of each robots and a storage full of each resources.

... Witch is useful to help debug.

*Sigh* The level of honesty in development & testing these days is appalling.  ::)


What do you mean by a populous style map? Do you mean something about the zoom level, or how much is visible at one time?

I haven't played Populous in ages. That was a fun game.
Title: Re: OutpostHD v0.6.0 Released!
Post by: UtopiaPlanetia on July 26, 2016, 12:11:44 AM
Quote from: Hooman on July 25, 2016, 11:54:42 PM
Quote
.... or you could extract the sources from the SVN and tweak the game to start with 10 of each robots and a storage full of each resources.

... Witch is useful to help debug.

*Sigh* The level of honesty in development & testing these days is appalling.  ::)


What do you mean by a populous style map? Do you mean something about the zoom level, or how much is visible at one time?

I haven't played Populous in ages. That was a fun game.

Here's a comparison of the Outpost 1, Age of Empires, and Civilization 2 screens. The view style I'm talking about is bounded by red, Populous/diamond style vs rectangular.
Outpost 1:
(https://forum.outpost2.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5836.0;attach=1398;image)

Age of Empires:
(https://forum.outpost2.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5836.0;attach=1402;image)

Civilization 2:
(https://forum.outpost2.net/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=5836.0;attach=1400;image)



Edit (leeor_net): modified image URL's to avoid link rot in the future.
Title: Re: OutpostHD v0.6.0 Released!
Post by: Hooman on July 26, 2016, 01:28:58 AM
Ahh, I get what you're saying. Nice use of images, that makes it crystal clear. I definitely prefer using up the screen space.

I sometimes feel a bit claustrophobic when playing full screen games (with rectangular maps) at low resolution, so you can only see a tiny zoomed area of the map. I wasn't thinking about all the dead space from having a non-rectangular map display that doesn't fill the available screen space. I think both are important, filling the available screen space, and having a zoom level that's appropriate to see enough of the action, but not so much that it becomes hard to control your units with precision.
Title: Re: OutpostHD v0.6.0 Released!
Post by: leeor_net on July 26, 2016, 09:49:08 PM
I'd thought about using the entire display area. It's actually really not difficult and the code I based OutpostHD on was a more generic project I called IsoEng which more closely resembles Age of Empires / Age of Kings.

I'm still undecided on it. There was something about the view from Outpost 1 that I liked... something about the diamond shape that was appealing to me though I think they did it that way because it was super primitive and Windows 3.1 wasn't really known for high performance graphics at the time.

Anyway, point being it felt classic to me which is why I opted for it, otherwise as can be seen from the attached screenshot, the code was originally working as a fullscreen type deal.