03-30-2011, 01:36 AM
There'll be a lot of this kind of a post. I am going to try to share a little bit of how the programming is going and hope that being forced to write coherent sentences will help me work through some of the sticky parts.
I've started working on combat and since this ain't Eve Online, combat is basically going to be high-text, low graphics. Combat will occur in discrete chunks of .10 days, each of which will be divided into 10 ticks, which ends up being a little less than a half hour. We'll be tracking speeds, distances (in light milliseconds which are just about 30 miles), maneuvers, and location within the planetary system (very important since a ship that can reach the oort cloud can jump out of the sector, thus escaping combat). Combat is asynchronous, so only one player is online as it happens. The other is sent an email as the attack start and a second one continuing the combat report as soon as it ends.
Offensive weapons break down into 5 major systems: beams; torps (preprogrammed so they don't adjust to their targets maneuvers) missiles (target seekers), spinal mounts and alien weapons which are wild cards and tend to be, once they are figured out, the sword of a thousand cuts, or the frost giants' invincible helmet - type weapons. Weapons are targeted at different parts of the ship and a particular set of weapons (all heat rays, for instance) can be targeted independently of other sets, even of the same type (Lasers, for instance.) Weapons are mounted on the ships, or can be mounted on combat craft - very useful for a carrier-type strike, especially if attacking a starbase (think Pearl Harbor.)
Defenses are ablative armor, forcefields that work like more ablative armor but slowly restore themselves as combat continues, ECM, and projectiles that attack incoming projectiles like chaff or ABMs. The program is set up to handle unlimited types of each weapon, but ships are limited to installing no more weapons than they have hard points, something that is determined by the type of hull and cannot be augmented.
The first combat-oriented screen I am working on is the one used to set the tactics to be used. Players can create multiple combat sequences and store them. Defensively, there will be the ability to use different programs depending on the type of attack and the threat level of the attacker. Offensive, the player chooses his sequence just before beginning the attack ("Computer, initiate combat sequence, "Riker-Alpha.")
I could have handled the whole tactics things with a series of lists. Choose a weapon from list A, a round to start firing in from list B, and a target section of the other ship, base, or combat boat, but I'm trying to make the process a wee bit less mechanical. What I have come up with is a orbiting group of images that stand for the basic weapons types. Click on one and it circles around to the front and center and a list of the weapons of that type fades in down and to the right on the screen.
In the center is an outline of a generic starship (or starbase, or small craft can be swapped in.) On it, in roughly the right position, is the name of an area that can be targeted (Bridge, Hull, Cargo, etc.)
To program a weapon type, the player selects the weapon for the list and then clicks on the target he wants to aim at. (The cursor turns to cross hairs as it approaches the ship outline.)
Right now I am happy with the outline and the orbit, but consider the list of targets boring (but I haven't got a lot of space available so anything fancy will require some GUI legerdemain), and I haven't quite figured out how to select the round to begin firing on.
Attached is a screen shot - there's no back end code for the screen at all, though there's a fair amount of jQuery used to make the orbit and to do some cross fading.
If anyone has thoughts, or questions or just wants to say, "Jon, it sucks, throw it out and start over," please feel free. Feedback will help a lot, especially since mistakes corrected now are so much less of a hassle than later on. I will listen carefully, and undefensively, I promise.
I've started working on combat and since this ain't Eve Online, combat is basically going to be high-text, low graphics. Combat will occur in discrete chunks of .10 days, each of which will be divided into 10 ticks, which ends up being a little less than a half hour. We'll be tracking speeds, distances (in light milliseconds which are just about 30 miles), maneuvers, and location within the planetary system (very important since a ship that can reach the oort cloud can jump out of the sector, thus escaping combat). Combat is asynchronous, so only one player is online as it happens. The other is sent an email as the attack start and a second one continuing the combat report as soon as it ends.
Offensive weapons break down into 5 major systems: beams; torps (preprogrammed so they don't adjust to their targets maneuvers) missiles (target seekers), spinal mounts and alien weapons which are wild cards and tend to be, once they are figured out, the sword of a thousand cuts, or the frost giants' invincible helmet - type weapons. Weapons are targeted at different parts of the ship and a particular set of weapons (all heat rays, for instance) can be targeted independently of other sets, even of the same type (Lasers, for instance.) Weapons are mounted on the ships, or can be mounted on combat craft - very useful for a carrier-type strike, especially if attacking a starbase (think Pearl Harbor.)
Defenses are ablative armor, forcefields that work like more ablative armor but slowly restore themselves as combat continues, ECM, and projectiles that attack incoming projectiles like chaff or ABMs. The program is set up to handle unlimited types of each weapon, but ships are limited to installing no more weapons than they have hard points, something that is determined by the type of hull and cannot be augmented.
The first combat-oriented screen I am working on is the one used to set the tactics to be used. Players can create multiple combat sequences and store them. Defensively, there will be the ability to use different programs depending on the type of attack and the threat level of the attacker. Offensive, the player chooses his sequence just before beginning the attack ("Computer, initiate combat sequence, "Riker-Alpha.")
I could have handled the whole tactics things with a series of lists. Choose a weapon from list A, a round to start firing in from list B, and a target section of the other ship, base, or combat boat, but I'm trying to make the process a wee bit less mechanical. What I have come up with is a orbiting group of images that stand for the basic weapons types. Click on one and it circles around to the front and center and a list of the weapons of that type fades in down and to the right on the screen.
In the center is an outline of a generic starship (or starbase, or small craft can be swapped in.) On it, in roughly the right position, is the name of an area that can be targeted (Bridge, Hull, Cargo, etc.)
To program a weapon type, the player selects the weapon for the list and then clicks on the target he wants to aim at. (The cursor turns to cross hairs as it approaches the ship outline.)
Right now I am happy with the outline and the orbit, but consider the list of targets boring (but I haven't got a lot of space available so anything fancy will require some GUI legerdemain), and I haven't quite figured out how to select the round to begin firing on.
Attached is a screen shot - there's no back end code for the screen at all, though there's a fair amount of jQuery used to make the orbit and to do some cross fading.
If anyone has thoughts, or questions or just wants to say, "Jon, it sucks, throw it out and start over," please feel free. Feedback will help a lot, especially since mistakes corrected now are so much less of a hassle than later on. I will listen carefully, and undefensively, I promise.
