Today:
* Slow progress on the board editor.

* Got some idea for a tutorial campaign against the AI (beware of ugly drawing below):



Basically you would start out in Primitivistan with only torchers and mace guys as your technology. When you conquer countries, you unlock new technologies, like this:

Primitivistan (mace guy, torcher)    
Russia (WOOD-FORTIFICATED VILLAGE (possible to burn down with your torchers), swordsman, fire defence)      
Ur (BRICK VILLAGE, swordsman, archer)
Mesopotamia (swordsman, archer, chariot, light armour)
Babylonia (ZIGGURAT (learn to build ramps here), mace, swordsman, archer, sling shooter)
Egypt (mace, swordsman, archer, javelinist)
India (swordsman, archer, elephant, light armour)
China (GREAT WALL, grenadier, mace guy, swordsman, light armour, )
Macedonia (pikesman, sling shooter, archer, horse)
Phoenicia (FORTIFICATION, boat, ...)
Rome (javelinist, shortsword, light armour, siege tower, horse)
Holy Roman Empire (CASTLES, crossbow, swordsman, mace guy, pikesman, heavy armour, siege tower, horse)
Japan (heavy armour, horse, swordsman, archer)
Spain (cannon guy, ...)
Great Britain (Cannon guy, musketeer, horse, swordsman, grenadier)

Basically this would add a theme and a purpose to the single player tutorial, even if multiplayer still would be the main attraction.

Now I am aware that this is all hand-waving until I have finished any well-functioning AI.

Today:
* implemented health indicators.
* implemented territory indicators.
* All unit type tiles drawn
* Better save/open dialogs

Found a free splash screen for the game:

[Battle in a Box]

How about Battle in a Box for a casual strategy game where there are different height levels in the terrain? http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=19145.0

Battle in a Box will be a two player turn based tactics/strategy game in which you can change the terrain during the course of the game. The code is currently written in Java, but I might port it to Flash/Actionscript later. [Update: it will be written in Javascript/HTML5.]

The game gives you quite an aerial view of the game board, so that both terrain levels and troop positions are visible at the same time without any need to switch any perspectives. This feature should be explained by the screenshot. There are 6 (0...5) different possible height levels per square, but due to all walls leaning slightly inwards in a "pyramidal" fashion no content of any square will ever overshadow the contents of the square behind it. Thus the game will have different height levels without that feature making the game problematic to navigate.

Code:

       _   _
       |5|_| |
       |_____|
       /  4  \
      /_______\
     /    3    \
    /___________\
    \\_   2   _//
     \ \_____/ /  
      \   1   /  
       \_____/
          0

Each turn, the players will get build points which they can use to move elements (like sand, rock, soil, stone, brick, or wood) around in their territory, and also there will be the transitions soil to brick and forest to wood when building. If the players have the unit Mason in their army then there will be another allowed transition rock to stone. [Update: I will not use any masons, and simply make rock a rare element in the levels.]

It will also be possible to set wood, forests, grass and villages on fire.

Otherwise, game play will be similar to Advance Wars. There will be around 13 different unit types (mace guy, archer, crossbow archer, pikesman, swordsman, musketeer, mason, battering ram guy, grenadier, cannon guy, torcher, flame projector tube guy, fire defence), but these will be customizable to the extent that any unit can be given three different grades of armour (none, light or heavy armour), and be put on top of different means of transportation (horse, boat, amphibious siege tower, elephant, chariot).

Transportation units will be able to die or survive separately from their riders, so they might be conquered by the enemy, and a unit will be able to leave its means of transportation to go to squares otherwise unreachable (like, leaving the siege tower to go to the top of a wall).

The game will come with a very easy-to-use board editor which will allow not only customization of the terrain, but also the customizing of the producable sets of units for each team, to provide for the setup of assymetric game situations or the simulation of different time periods, like ancient, medieval and early modern periods.

Focus will be on human-to-human play (two player multiplayer), with only some simple AI being done for some tutorial levels.

Progress so far: the game is playable in "both players on the same computer" mode, i.e. no networking done yet. A public demo will be up soon. The board editor is basically completed.

Hi, I'm Skrjablin. I'm from Sweden and 30 years old.

I started programming in Turbo Pascal in the 90's, and made several small games with that.

I studied for one year at a computer science program but then I dropped out. Right now I'm occupied with something else (nothing with computers).

But I've started this turn based strategy game project in Java of which I've posted a mockup in the mockup thread: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=7091.2760 . It will be multiplayer only, so I won't have to bother about AI. The original part of it is that you can change the terrain during the course of the game.

Here's something I'm working on.





Edit: changed to another host for the images.