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BrodieBrodie
(@brodiebrodie)
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Joined: 12 years ago
Posts: 30
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Version: alpha 1.9.9.1.7

adjustments: started work on the unit menu icons, all very basic now. if cursor over a unit or unit is selected, a square appears (this will be for a picture of the unit type) and three coloured bars, these will represent:-

life: how many of the units are dead/alive

health: the units current wounds/damage/health

moral: a units stomach for battle and likelihood of surrender/desertion

The "moral bar" will stay for debugging, but in the final game moral will be an unknown influence in combat. Translation: it will not be displayed to the player

experience: still in the pipeline, the current thinking is that this will be shown with pictorial medals on the picture of the unit type, and icons below pic to indicate special skills.

Added code to force units to spread out in the occupation of a hex. the hex now has 7 possible locations for unit placement, this allows easier view of units in hex.

to do: will need code to sort units so that further units are not drawn before closer units in the same hex (using a sorting method along the y axis, must be careful however, not to to consume to much processor time sorting through nodes).

added more units at start locations and made all units in the universe operate under a random move/wait sequence. One will still be able to "intercept" units and make them go to diferent locations. Note that this is not start positions; At this stage it is to test the game's operating speed. Result of test: the galactic planet scroll is beginning to show signs of strain, it has occasional jitters. According: the galactic scroll will have to go (it was to fast and had several complaints). To do: a galactic zoom in/out on planets map similar to the orbit/planet surface zoom feature. Future Implementation intention: left click selects and zooms in, right click zooms out to show the hole galaxy.


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voxel
(@voxel)
Petty Officer Registered
Joined: 14 years ago
Posts: 41
 

Just a minor point, should the 'moral' bar be the 'morale' bar? Or does the bar actually indicate the Moral standing of the unit, such as their predisposition to larceny, adultery, drug use etc?


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BrodieBrodie
(@brodiebrodie)
Petty Officer Registered
Joined: 12 years ago
Posts: 30
Topic starter  

Version: alpha 1.9.9.1.8

added code to sort units on the y axis (to stop overlapping)

this is only done on the planet viewed (no point sorting the

perspective of units if you cant see them), so no problem with speed.

adjusted and added new forest graphics and adjusted frame graphics.

added a sorting routine on units to de-stack them (i.e, if there are seven units in a hex,

all new units added to this hex will go to center, so the sorting routine checks if a unit leaves and makes available the orbit of the hex, and if a space is available and more than 1 unit is in center, a center hex unit will move from the center to the orbit.).

stopped the "standoff" having a time limit. units now standoff until told to do otherwise.

to do: an extra structure is needed for combat. I will need a node that can be constructed/deleted (start and end of battle) and that holds info on the battles participants, location etc. It will need to be flexible to contain information other than units and future information (hex, defense, angles of attack, orbital bombardment, artillery fire, special ops, radiation, fire, gas, psi attack etc). This virtual structure will be struct LPbattle.


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BrodieBrodie
(@brodiebrodie)
Petty Officer Registered
Joined: 12 years ago
Posts: 30
Topic starter  

Version: alpha 1.9.9.1.9

recent additions, adjustments: Added pine forests and graphics of pine forests,

added Forrest types to be mixed, pine, jungle Jungle is programed but do not yet have graphics for hexes. Allowed ice worlds to have pine trees.

Found and Plugged a "memory leak" that was a bug in the unit movement. This took time, but had to be done before further work on units and combat.

Started work on combat. this code is not yet integrated. Code can be found in a new header file: combat.h have defined the way the computer will handle battles, this is: hexes are attacked (not units) attacking hexes are linked to the defending hexes, but it is the units in attacking hexes that attack defending hexes. all units in a defending hex will suffer an attack on that hex. So grouping units in a hex will have the advantage of concentrating an attack, but the disadvantage of receiving damage/wounds to all equally.

Notes on future development: the game uses 32 bits but if the bits are changed (see below) to 16 the games memory and speed radically improve. The 32 bits offers very little in way of improvement in my view compared to the amount of space and speed it requires. The areas that would really suffer are only: the Gas giant's graphics, and the planets atmosphere graphics, and both these are just a cosmetic gimmicks. I will keep it currently in 32 bits, but work on changing this (smaller gas giants, less obvious atmosphere variation, and some adjustments on nebula)


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BrodieBrodie
(@brodiebrodie)
Petty Officer Registered
Joined: 12 years ago
Posts: 30
Topic starter  

Version: alpha 1.9.9.2.0

recent additions, adjustments:

graphics:

added 4 new farm land types to diversify

programming:

routine to clip units images if they are partly off screen. example code located in "faction_flags.h"

Code:
// first scroll cut (e & w)
if (mirror_image==false)
{
if (rcRect_put_unit.right>screen_x && rcRect_put_unit.left<screen_x)
{
rcRect_get_unit.right =flag_frame+32-((rcRect_put_unit.right-screen_x)*ZooM);
rcRect_put_unit.right=screen_x;
}

if (rcRect_put_unit.right>0 && rcRect_put_unit.left<0)
{
rcRect_get_unit.left =((flag_frame+(rcRect_put_unit.left*-1))*ZooM);
rcRect_put_unit.left=0;
}
}
else
{
// first scroll cut (e & w) mirror image version
if (rcRect_put_unit.right>screen_x && rcRect_put_unit.left<screen_x)
{
rcRect_get_unit.left = (flag_frame+((rcRect_put_unit.right-screen_x)*ZooM)) ;
rcRect_put_unit.right=screen_x;
}
if (rcRect_put_unit.right>0 && rcRect_put_unit.left<0)
{
rcRect_get_unit.right =((flag_frame+32-(rcRect_put_unit.left*-1))*ZooM);
rcRect_put_unit.left=0;
}
}

// second scroll cut (n & s)
if (rcRect_put_unit.bottom>screen_y && rcRect_put_unit.top<screen_y)// the scroll cut (n & s)
{
rcRect_get_unit.bottom =( 48 + ( 2 *48) )-((rcRect_put_unit.bottom-screen_y)*ZooM);
rcRect_put_unit.bottom=screen_y;
}
if (rcRect_put_unit.bottom>0 && rcRect_put_unit.top<0)
{
rcRect_get_unit.top =(0+( 0 + ( 2 *49) )+(rcRect_put_unit.top*-1))*ZooM;
rcRect_put_unit.top=0;
}

added combat code, see file "combat.h" in the ad infinitum code file. rundown:

units attack adjustments: morale bar reduces if under attack, units force is equal to number attacking of attacking units (morale bar goes down faster if more units attacking), units attacking from several directions have a greater force that increases according to angles of attack (morale bar goes down faster if unit attacking from different directions), unit locked in attack and is difficult to remove (this will be used later for retreat), all units in hex respond to attack, units know if the hex attacked becomes empty (they stop attacking), better position finding in attacked and attacking hex, units automatically defend if they move into an attacked hex.

To test: find worlds: Yonder, Angel or Caledonia (sea world, may not have linked islands), or Kingsteps; look for different coloured units and either watch as they move into each other, or intercept and force them into each other.


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ollobrain
(@ollobrain)
Lieutenant Registered
Joined: 13 years ago
Posts: 564
 

this game has gone dead is it still in development or has the programmer had a brain explosion and given up


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BrodieBrodie
(@brodiebrodie)
Petty Officer Registered
Joined: 12 years ago
Posts: 30
Topic starter  

still in development, mind you when i revisit the code after a break i do feel a brain explosion is cumming on, i certainly need an aspirin or two. I am a very messy code writer.

I have given the project a break but hope to return. I think it is important to understand that it is just lonesome I on the project. I have posted on forums trying to stimulate interest and get others to join or help, however I have not had much success. I think the problem is that my vision is quite narrow, I use outdated grafixs libraries (and avoid 3D), the code is very nerdy as it is in C, and few know of the game's main influence: EFS.


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JoelMB12
(@joelmb12)
Crewman Registered
Joined: 12 years ago
Posts: 4
 

Please mate do not give up!!!


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traker
(@traker)
Petty Officer Registered
Joined: 15 years ago
Posts: 23
 

Keep up the good work. Just downloading now to have a look and play.

I tip my hat to anyone with the patience and ability to be able to design and the code out an idea into a game so as long as you are enjoying the project, keep going until you realise your goal.


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DarkOne
(@sscadmin)
Supreme Dark Emperor Admin
Joined: 8 years ago
Posts: 7851
 

I think development has stopped on Ad-Infinitum since there hasn't been a code update on sourceforge for over 4yrs. Has this been branched off and picked up by someone else or is this abandoned now? I know SF has SSC as the website for this game so I will keep this area open for now.


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