next »

[Foolish Mortals]

It's WWII. You're a general sitting in a tent. All you have in front of you is a map, and a radio. Can you win the battle? Radio General is a unique strategy game where you interact with your units over the radio using speech recognition. Test your mettle and relive famous battles as a WWII general.



Click-to-play

Radio General website | Twitter | Facebook

Devlog 1: Simple Unit Movement
Devlog 2: Attacking
Devlog 3: Flanking
Devlog 4: Camera Movement
Devlog 5: Camera Bounds & Moving Pieces
Devlog 6: Drawing
Devlog 7: Visuals Update
Devlog 8: Orders
Devlog 9: Tutorial Mission
Devlog 10: 2.5D Visuals
Devlog 11: Replays
Devlog 12: Speech-to-text and Morale
Devlog 13: New UI & Camouflage
Devlog 14: New UI Continued
Devlog 15: 3D
Devlog 16: Paradrops & Paperwork
Devlog 17: Fresh Coating of Paint
Devlog 18: Painted Figurines
Devlog 19: Day-Night Cycles
Devlog 20: Operation Husky
Devlog 21: Great Outdoors
Devlog 22: We Hear You, HQ
Devlog 23: Hitler Line
Devlog 24: We've got a visual on the target
Devlog 25: A good general does their research
Devlog 26: A Dynamic Campaign
Devlog 27: A Daring Raid
Devlog 28: The End in Sight
Devlog 29: Release Date Announced
Deblog 30: Historical Research
Deblog 31: Implementing Speech Recognition

[PetSkull]

A pity you use photobucket, as all we can see is "Please update your account to enbable 3rd party hosting".

[Foolish Mortals]

A pity you use photobucket, as all we can see is "Please update your account to enbable 3rd party hosting".

Thanks for pointing that out! Will use my own site for hosting from now on.

[KPas]

Ok, this is in an early stage, but I think, it's a really cool concept, even without those optional features!

[Mochnant]

I love the idea, though I can also see potential issues with gameplay and the fun-factor.  I'll be following along to watch the progress!

[Foolish Mortals]

Ok, this is in an early stage, but I think, it's a really cool concept, even without those optional features!

Thanks! Yeah, we'll have to see on those. It's easy to plan to make a giant fantastic game, and then never finish due to fature creep (though voice commands is hilarious). My two previous games have taught me to aim smaller, and focus on actually finishing something.

I love the idea, though I can also see potential issues with gameplay and the fun-factor.  I'll be following along to watch the progress!

Definitely. There'll have to be lots of play-testing to see if the game is fun at all. We'll see if stays in the more 'game-like' territory or if it veers more into the 'experience/simulator' territory. Although we always want to create experiences for the players in games, the main goal is still to have fun. If you're solely focusing on the experience/simulation, then some fun can be sacrificed for immersion.

[Mochnant]

Definitely. There'll have to be lots of play-testing to see if the game is fun at all. We'll see if stays in the more 'game-like' territory or if it veers more into the 'experience/simulator' territory. Although we always want to create experiences for the players in games, the main goal is still to have fun. If you're solely focusing on the experience/simulation, then some fun can be sacrificed for immersion.

The thought did occur to me that this could be targeted at the simulation crowd, too, depending on which way you wanted to go.  I'd prefer "fun" myself, but this does seem ripe for realism, especially given the subject matter.

[MegaTiny]

This is a pretty neat idea! It would be awesome if you got a sped up replay at the end showing where your troops actually were compared to where you moved their little tokens about.

[Foolish Mortals]

I love the idea, though I can also see potential issues with gameplay and the fun-factor.  I'll be following along to watch the progress!

Definitely. Will try to determine what's fun and what's not as quickly as possible with the prototype.

This is a pretty neat idea! It would be awesome if you got a sped up replay at the end showing where your troops actually were compared to where you moved their little tokens about.

Yes! I was intending on having a replay feature, which should have been mentioned in the original post. Overlaying what the user had over what was actually happening could prove interesting for analysis or for a games study.

[Foolish Mortals]

Development log 1: Simple Unit Movement





This week I made an extremely simple tutorial on moving objects in Unity. Each unit has a given target object it is moving towards. This target can be adjusted in real-time, and the unit will continue to move to its destination.



This tutorial is basic enough to be useful for anyone starting with Unity. I enjoy making tutorial videos, so the next few videos will be very tutorial-like. As the game becomes more complex, I won't be able to cover all the code and techniques, and I'll fall back into doing short updates on newly implemented features.

[Cunnah]

For long term ideas you should be able to plan movements with timings so that you can plan a general scheme. troops will still get lost or be delayed. Another thing that could tie into all this is having commander stats involving land-nav, moral, tactics etc... so you could choose who does what.

[Foolish Mortals]

For long term ideas you should be able to plan movements with timings so that you can plan a general scheme. troops will still get lost or be delayed. Another thing that could tie into all this is having commander stats involving land-nav, moral, tactics etc... so you could choose who does what.

Queueing up orders that will execute at specific times is a great idea! Hopefully it won't be too confusing to visualize or keep track of though, as I'm going for a fairly minimalist interface.

As for commander stats, each individual unit will have different stats and write-up you can read during the match or the in the briefing. I'll have to see if there's a need more for stats and complexity for overall company or division commanders.

[Foolish Mortals]

Devlog 2: Attacking



This week I added extremely simple combat to the game. When an enemy unit movies within range of another unit (the ugly big red circle above), they automatically start fighting. If there are multiple enemies in range, they'll shoot at all of them, splitting their damage between them.





Since the player will be removed quite removed from the action, you won't be able to micromanage your units, meaning combat can be simple. Most of the strategy will be in positioning your units, and each terrain type will offer different amounts of cover or defence.

For now, each unit has health, damage, and defence (% reduction of damage). For next time I want to add  flanking; having multiple units surround a unit negates its defence. Flanking will be important when an enemy unit is entrenched in a town giving them 90% defence.

In the future I'll add morale (panicking, retreating), terrain defensive bonuses,  and range damage penalties (fighting at range means less damage dealt).

[Foolish Mortals]

Devlog 3: Flanking



This week I added perhaps the most simple yet effective military maneuver of all time: flanking. I definitely should've picked better colours in the above image, but the various text is: green for health, blue for defence and orange for the 'flanking vulnerability' of a unit.
Defence is currently very simple; it negates X% of incoming damage (0.9 in the image means 90% of incoming damage is negated).
The orange number is also a percent, and it increases when the there are two or more units attacking the current unit. This percentage nullifies the some of the current defence of the unit. Ex: if a unit has 90% defence, and a flanking vulnerability of 50%, the current defence of the unit will be: 90 - 50= 40%
The way I get this number is by calculating the angle between the attackers, and defenders.


In the image above, there are two attacking units, and with the defending unit at the origin, the angle between the attackers is 90 degrees. To get the actual the actual flanking vulnerability number of the unit I take the angle, and divide it by 180 degrees, since that would be the maximum angle between two units (pictured below). Ex: 90 / 180 = 0.5



The idea is that it's difficult for units to defend from multiple angles of attack, and especially difficult to find cover where you're safe from all angles. This will encourage players to surround entrenched enemies, and of course if defending prevent a full surround. Making sure enemies don't come from behind will be of vital importance.

[Foolish Mortals]

Devlog 4: Camera Movement

Was pretty busy this week, so only got around to making the camera move around and zoom based on player input. Not sure if I'll need it, but for testing it's useful to move around the camera when using different screen resolutions. Also zooming is useful for looking at small details. Probably in the final version the camera won't move, and everything will fit on the single screen. Less confusing that way.

On the bright side, the above tutorial is simple and useful for any game being made in Unity.

[SchriefFighter]

I'm digging these updates.

[pelle]

Great idea and looks like you are making some progress! Since seeing Sink Bismarck and Battle of Britain as a kid I never could forget those command rooms where they push around models. Ideally you should sell optional printed maps and units with the game so we can push markers around physically. And those long wooden rakes in a deluxe version with bigger maps. There were some games almost like that in the 1970-80's (google Simulations Canada if you are not familiar with them, although there were others as well) before computer wargames could have proper graphics on the screen, but probably way simpler than what you do.

What you describe sounds more like military training games/simulator, going back at least to Reisswitz' Kriegsspiel in 1824 with teams sending written orders to the umpire and receiving written reports back? You might find something fun to borrow in declassified documents online?

[Foolish Mortals]

Great idea and looks like you are making some progress! Since seeing Sink Bismarck and Battle of Britain as a kid I never could forget those command rooms where they push around models. Ideally you should sell optional printed maps and units with the game so we can push markers around physically. And those long wooden rakes in a deluxe version with bigger maps. There were some games almost like that in the 1970-80's (google Simulations Canada if you are not familiar with them, although there were others as well) before computer wargames could have proper graphics on the screen, but probably way simpler than what you do.

What you describe sounds more like military training games/simulator, going back at least to Reisswitz' Kriegsspiel in 1824 with teams sending written orders to the umpire and receiving written reports back? You might find something fun to borrow in declassified documents online?

Those rakes are the best! Haha, yes if it ever goes to kickstarter, it'll for sure have sweet physical maps you could play the game with. Actually, all you need to play the game is the incoming audio, and a way to send orders (like voice recognition over a microphone), which could be a from a phone or tablet. Hmm, that might be worth looking into. It would also be fun to play on large table-sized touchscreens.

Yeah, those old boardgame-esque simulations were definitely an inspiration. The problem with boardgames is that they struggle with hidden information, often requiring another player to run the other side (and hope they don't cheat). Nice thing with computers is they're reliable, and automate a lot of the tedium of moving lots of small chips or counters around.

Ooh, this Kriegspiel sounds interesting. I'll have to do some research on that. Thanks for the tip.

I'm digging these updates.

I'm glad someone reads them! I find it motivates me to work on the game when I have a set schedule, like making an update each week.

[pelle]

Huge table, real components, rakes, microphone and speakers connected to a hidden phone/tablet/computer.

Playing old manual military games is a niche hobby only now. The military mostly switched to computers decades ago. Some of the earliest computer games they did, back when some operator still had to turn written orders into punchcards or something might have been quite similar to what you do with audio only (from the players' perspectives).

[Foolish Mortals]

Huge table, real components, rakes, microphone and speakers connected to a hidden phone/tablet/computer.

Playing old manual military games is a niche hobby only now. The military mostly switched to computers decades ago. Some of the earliest computer games they did, back when some operator still had to turn written orders into punchcards or something might have been quite similar to what you do with audio only (from the players' perspectives).

Add in an old officer's hat and it'd be perfect!

For sure. Hopefully this will be a bit more accessible than the old military games, since the opponents are automated.