Development Goals

[Leviathan]

As more and more people are egar to help out and learn to code we need to use every1s skills to work to some goals, to produce stuff people would want.

- Multiplayer Maps - The easist to make, anyone can do it. I wanna make some new fair maps, like Nostalgia.

- Pure fighting maps - No SF, Unlimted ore etc, xamlit is allready doing on of these.

- Battle maps - Like in Red Alert you could chose to have no base and just a load of units. Set up armys for each player on some good maps. Team battles, different tech level battles, different size armys etc.

- Colony Games - Only people who can code AI can do these, if we get more people able to code AI then people can work together to create these games. Haxtor is allready working on one There are many ideas which can be done here.

- Co-op Colony Games - I say Colony because its vs a AI. Again needs people who can do AI, but basic stuff like placing player bases, mines, units and a large AI base or whatevea (howevea the map is) can be done by anyone. This is a map which has been wanted for a long time. Once we made a 2 players vs AI map, the code could be added to to make it 3 players vs a stronger AI and so on.

- Co-op And Mission Multiplayer Games - Like players vs AI but this time player(s) vs player(s). The bases are setup, eg one person might have a realy big base and other players have to attack it. Like some of the single player missions but instead of playing a AI a person(s) controls the main base etc. Attack and defend misions. Im sure there are many types of missions which could be setup ready to play.

- Ready to go Games - Your bases are already built, your teched up, you can just start battleing right away.

- Use Map Settings - UMS Is a type of map in StarCraft, it is custom maps which have trigers and all sorts of types of games for people who dont wanna play a normal game. Exapmle is mass attack games, units get auto produced and you attack each other untll you kill there base.

Any other ideas?

We wanna add even more variaty to the game and make it more attractive to people, and more acesable to people, and possible for noobs to be able to play right away, it takes noobs time to be able to play in normal games.
 

[xamlit]

Hmm.. I am thinking of coding a Campain map that is kind of a like a commando based mission. Where players are given certain type of units and there are two objectives.
1: TO protect the supernova you are provided with at all costs whatsoever.
2: To destroy the AI Command Center. The AI will not have vehicle factories but will have several units on patrol back and forth. Of course they will have 3x the amount of units that you are given.


Any ideas?

Any Input?


Anyone Want to help?

[BlackBox]

Mission sounds nice

Also: DLL interface for more languages. See http://forum.outpostuniverse.net/index.php?showtopic=1333

- OP2_ART editor
- Tileset editors, etc, since the backend is available for people to use

- Help files for coding, like tutorials, etc?

- Also, learning more about the game, etc and how it works internally

[Eddy-B]

Anyone who wants to learn more about AI coding, let us know. I've posted some important stuff you absolutely need to understand to code AI's, but if there's more questions, just ask, and i'll work out another "readme" on some AI topic.

Learning AI link: http://forum.outpostuniverse.net/index.php?showtopic=1298

[xamlit]

Thanx Eddy.  Definately going to need all the help possible... I will call it "Behind Enemy Lines" original right ;-).

[zigzagjoe]

ya i like that idea xam.

and i have FINALLY done it. I have conquered Land Rush. no cheated game msg. All thats left to do at the time of this post is to put the bit that allows for people quitting.(if you quit before building in a stock lr; the game would go on forever; the vcon was never set/enabled). mine will allow for that. expect a release very soon.

[Cynex]

k. I'm willing to provide an interface for an ART-editor.

It's easy since the dll already loads the structure. It only has to save it back in the same way.

A resulting art editor would only have to edit the (loaded) memory structures and images. I already have an idea on how to do that, but maybe not the time to.
So let me first do the save-interface and then we'll see.

For the mission ideas:
Sound interesting to me.

[Leviathan]

So editing the ART (and game sprites) is not far away?

Can you make it so you can import bmp files you have into the art program over a current image (non animation) and make sure the height and width are the same as the image your overiting.

[Cynex]

Yeah it is basically easy to do.
The only restriction is that the bitmap would have to use some of the present palettes; or at least have not more than 256 colors (including transparency). In second case the editor has to add a new palette entry to the art-structure and if you add many images with many different sets of colors it could end up with too many palettes in the prt-file (I'm not even sure if more than 9 palettes are supported by the game).

So either all the images have to use the same color set, or we have to find a good dithering algorithm (If you know any, please say) to blend existing colors as near as possible to the required new ones.

An editor in the hypercomplicated way I imagine would be very difficult.
Maybe I decide to start on with something easier, like the ability to replace existing images by new ones in the art-viewer.

However the final editor should be able to add completely new images and to arrange them to new groups. It should also have an integrated palette based image editor. And of course many other nice stuff.

[Leviathan]

Great.

I dont think full editing is needed, with changing groups, or adding new images. Just replacing a current still image with a bmp you import (then later editing the animation images), i presume the art/op2 can only take 256 color (8bit) files, just like the well tile set bmps.

Yes i think images we import should be of the same type, no messing about. Make sure when you import a image to replace a current one that it is 8bit, ive been using a app called AhaView to convert 24bit bmps to 8bit.

[Hooman]

I'm pretty sure you can change the number of palettes. I believe it stored the number of palette in the file's section header.

Oh, and Cynex, do you know how to determine the bit depth of any given image?

As an interesting note, OP2 does do some checking with the tilesets for 16 bit files, but it's support is incomplete and it crashes when it tries to load them. (I believe it expects a palette to be allocated, but none is.) I think monochrome worked though.  :lol:  

[Cynex]

Sure. There's a count-entry. But the question is if op2 has enough internal space to allocate more than 9 palettes. Moreover there is some weird color-changing to display all 6 possible player colors which may not be done with additional palettes.
Either way - it doesn't seem to be the sense of it to have a new palette for every image.
So new images will have to use the existing palettes.

But don't worry. I already worked on some dithering-algorithm and it works pretty fine.
I also started with the backsave routine. If I get it right, it'll be finished soon.


For the bit depth:
If we're talking about bitmap files, you have to look at the file header:
Byte #0x1C (word) should be the color depth.
All arts in op2_art.bmp use 8bpp. The tilesets I don't know.
 

[Hooman]

Not all bitmap data in the art file is 8bpp. Most of them are, but things like shadows aren't. At least, last I remember, I got garbage at bitdepths other than 1.

The closest I could get, was to check the image type and try to guess the bit depth based off of that. The problem is, there are lots of type values, and I don't want to have to go through and figure out each one.


Also, I think there might be a limit on the number of palettes. I'm not sure why now. Maybe it's just my imaginationg making things up, but for some reason I have a feeling there was a limit around 32 or 36 or somethign like that. I think I might have saw some code to make me think that, but I really can't remember right now. It's really odd.

Anyways, I do believe there is a limit to the number of images and animations that can exist. So you might not be able to add new graphics, at least not many more. They seems to use statically allocated space to store the info. I made a few more notes on the graphics a few days ago, but can't quite remember the details off the top of my head anymore.
 

[Cynex]

Sure. I forgot the shadows that use 1bpp.

To post some news I'm currently working on implementing the save-stuff into the viewer.
It gave me a headache to try suppressing the flickering when resizing the preview-window and I still failed. (You need a preview window when importing a new image to test which palette and/or dithering algo (if I provide more than one) works best.)
(The main window is flickerless because it has no controls in it... the preview window has, therefore the task is a lot more difficult.)

If I encounter no further problems it'll be finished next weekend (still don't be dissapointed if it isn't).

[xamlit]

I'm planning on releasing a colony map in the next 3 weeks. Its going to have  a 'Behind Enemy Lines' type of theme but with a twist. Seriously, I think that it might be the best colony game ever created! Its absolutely amzaing and ingenius. All I want to say is that the AI is very important in the game and you need it to survive, for the first 100 marks or so. Its absolutely awesome. I just need to know one thing. I remember something about being able to transfer colonists? How does that work?

[Leviathan]

Great work xamlit, how about once its at a good state releasing the source code also and hopefully Moogle and others can take a look and help make it better, as long as staying along the lines of the mission that you want etc. comunity based colony game. also, more source of the wiki the better,

[BlackBox]

Well transferring colonists isn't "automatic", you have to detect when something like an evac transport comes close to your base or whereever, like with an Evac trigger.

In the trigger callback you'd need to do something to increase the other player's colonist count and decrease yours, for example a truck with 5 workers

Code: [Select]

// Player 0 - you, Player 1 - recipient
Player[1].SetWorkers(Player[1].Workers()+5);
Player[0].SetWorkers(Player[0].Workers()-5);

And you'd probably have to have checks to make sure the colonist counts can't go below zero, etc.

That's the easiest way I can think of to transfer colonists.

And yeah, after you get it in a semi releasable state it would be nice to see source code. That way people can look at it and learn from it (there aren't enough colony games already).

[Eddy-B]

Well transferring colonists isn't "automatic", you have to detect when something like an evac transport comes close to your base or whereever, like with an Evac trigger.

In the trigger callback you'd need to do something to increase the other player's colonist count and decrease yours, for example a truck with 5 workers

Code: [Select]

// Player 0 - you, Player 1 - recipient
Player[1].SetWorkers(Player[1].Workers()+5);
Player[0].SetWorkers(Player[0].Workers()-5);

And you'd probably have to have checks to make sure the colonist counts can't go below zero, etc.

That's the easiest way I can think of to transfer colonists.

And yeah, after you get it in a semi releasable state it would be nice to see source code. That way people can look at it and learn from it (there aren't enough colony games already).

Same thing i've used in Renegades, mission 3
didn't even notice there was a post about this.

Code: [Select]

TethysGame::AddMessage(residence,"Colonists transferred safely.",0,178);
plHuman.SetScientists(plHuman.Scientists()+5);
plHuman.SetWorkers(plHuman.Workers()+10);
plHuman.SetKids(plHuman.Kids()+10);

:lol: almost exactly the same

[Eddy-B]

To add to levi's list:
i've created a new wiki page for a new AI project, as discussed in the coding forum

[xamlit]

Thanx... Eddy-B... I appreciate the help.

[Eddy-B]

ur welcome, but it was hacker that posted it.. lol

[Leviathan]

What are people currently working on ??

Hacker is doing the mapper.
Eddy renegades.
Im working on some maps and ice tileset atm.

[Eddy-B]

Yes, Renegades.
But all things i found out (either bugs or quirks or new ways to use ai functions etc), i will share after i'm done with my 4 missions (which should be this september).

Also i'm willing to help out with the "General AI" (see above; a new wiki page)

[xamlit]

I have a suprise for everyone, hopefully I'll be done by the end of the year. Its going to revolutionize OP2. I haven't said much about it because the more publicized it is the more people want it and the greater the stress level.... Lets say that it will be done in at least the next 8 months... Just overcompensating.

[Leviathan]

You have to at least give US a idea about what your doing..