A Knight's War - Code A Game Competition 4th May to 30th June - Retro Strategy

[iWasAdam]

I applaud your effort to promote programming to those young whipper snappers. 

But, I would be careful about using it to promote your own stuff.

[Matty]

That's a good sign.  I had a day off work and one of my colleagues played it for an hour in the campaign and won 6 battles.

First good point:He played it successfully without me being there to tell him or show him how to play.  In other words it was simple enough for a seasoned strategy gamer to figure it out.

Second good point: To play for an hour indicates a certain level of enjoyment.

I'm very pleased especially that I didnt need to explain anything other than what he read in the in game help.

[iWasAdam]

brilliant news

[Matty]

Optional feature of game - I'd built the code but hadn't found a place for it yet....the simple dungeon search for heroes on the main map:

In the 'Online Multiplayer' mode while you are in between battles - sometimes waiting for the army to rebuild - you can choose to explore dungeons which will boost your heroes' stats if they find the magic treasure in the dungeon - if they die the magical bonus stats reset.

It's pretty easy little dungeon, more a mini game which the player an perform if they lose their whole army and have to wait for it to rebuild.

[Matty]

Hmm something seems wrong with either my phone or the forum.  Image wont attach.

[Matty]

Try again:

[Derron]

You really should consider drawing over your drawings (create a new layer) - add details, paint over wrong placed lines ...
in other words: improve your assets step by step.

People are used to see very well defined and detailled paintings these days. they might see your images and think of it as "sketches" or "rough work art". This will create prejudices or misassumptions about the game: do polishing - especially when it comes to press related stuff.


@ armor of the knight
it has a monotone-highlight and monotone-shadow, maybe have some "white" for spectacularity on certain areas.



bye
Ron

[Matty]

Escape key now takes you to the main menu (not sure how I'll do it on tablets and mobile devices....it works on them but I don't want to clutter the screen with a 'back' or 'exit' button anywhere - currently simply refreshing the browser allows a mobile device to go back to the menu....on a desktop the Escape key is the method.

Also - on hitting escape from the campaign, resuming the campaign will take you to where you left off, although I have not implemented a full save system - just a session based one (ie if you go to other parts of the game like 2 player mode or online mode and return it will resume the campaign but if you refresh the browser or leave the web page and come back it won't retain the state--though this could be done easily enough later.

Also - got some feedback, Paladins needed a bit of a boost to their abilities - so they now heal other units (one other adjacent unit as well as themselves), and also the Hit and Miss text was too hard to see - so I've added a drop shadow to the text as it floats up makes it stand out just that bit more...the problem was the contrast between the blues and reds and the green grass - too hard to see easily.


Additional - PART 2 - I'm thinking after the competition is over to revisit this game and give it a makeover as a sci fi themed game with slightly different battle modes (two layers of battle - get past the enemy's space fleet then engage in ground combat)

It will use very much the same set of code with certain changes, but the framework will allow for an entirely different themed game to be developed with more features than the current one.

What I've learned from developing this game will stand me in good stead for the next one.

An idea I'd had was to release both these new games I develop on Android for mobile as well  - but given my lack of success commercially on the mobile environment with any of my products (some have as few as 20 downloads) I might give it a miss.

[Matty]

Enjoying a multiplayer game on my phone.

My desktop has a fair amount of territory as does my mobile phone.  The other players are mine as well from a variety of devices not just at home (work/parents/different browsers)

As a player gains more territory the bonuses their army accrues makes them harder to beat and easier to win battles with.

There are a variety of bonuses that are applied to the whole army such as rerolls to attacks and defense, modifiers to stats, extra half damage, and location specific abilities.  Choke points are very defensive positions.

[Matty]

To help test the multiplayer (and because I like automating things an training AIs to play stuff) -

I've added a hidden mode in multiplayer that allows the AI to take over your army and play out the online multiplayer campaign (until you press escape and resume manual control)....

It will allow me to test multiple players simultaneously in as close to 'real world' gameplay as possible without needing too many human testers (I'm not going to say how to activate this mode but I will most likely disable it before the competition closes...or may be not? ha ha ha)

[Derron]

How do you do the AI training - I mean, how does the AI learn what is good and bad regarding "winning" / "not getting defeated" ?

Do you plan different "characters" (explorer, military, scientist...)?


bye
Ron

[Steve Elliott]

Graphically this game is looking much better, thanks to Adam and Derron, and you for taking their advice on-board   

[Matty]

In this case the training is 'me' working out the various parameters that should be fed to the AI internally to produce a quality opponent....not AI learning itself as such...human guidance to create a better player.

On a different note - Internet Explorer now catered for - it had some funky way of doing the mouse screen position compared to Chrome and Firefox which was buggering things up.

[Matty]

Thanks Steve

[Steve Elliott]

No problem.  Good luck with it.