Dune 2000:the era of war

[Feda]

"Light Tank (our old combat tanks)
Medium Tank (altilery tanks)
Large Tank (usual ix upgraded tanks)
Platinum Tank (high level devastation machines)
Special Tank (extra tank)"

 

Don't see the point to call all combat tanks "light tanks" . You can make a difference by taking my variant of ord light tank, atr med tank and hark heavy tank. Calling them atr light tank, ord light tank and hark light tank is weird because looking at your list, all other tanks have different names, nothing about medium and heavy. I sw that in terms of categories u made  "light tank", "medium tank" and "heavy tank" categories and thats ok, its in theory. But in the game, it would be better to give a use for the medium and heavy names too, and I just gave a good example for that: naming the ordos tank LIGHT TANK, the atr tank MEDIUM TANK and the hark tank HEAVY TANK. :) In my view, at least, it looks alot better than calling all of them light tanks as in the original dune, "combat tanks".. no differency between names is boring :D ( not to mention that the light medium and heavy also suggest the unit attributes - the armor/hp and the speed - )

 

Then, artillery units are medium tanks ? Lol, that sounds really weird :D I wouldn't even call them tanks if I were you. As I said medium suggest bigger strenght than the light and in this case artilleries would be stronger than combat tanks .. (i mean what name suggests)

[THE AQIB]

actually with six different light tanks i cant name then light medium or heavy... as im bringing difference to each house im facing few difficulties... if you look at the powers of the tanks altillery are medium tanks... sonic lvl tanks for all houses are stronger but slower... hence heavy tanks...

[THE AQIB]

should it be widescreen or usual 4:3?? for the first release...???

[THE AQIB]

i cant upload pics... error crops up... any idea??

[X3M]

If you think about it, you give the players a choice in this screen resolution. Both 4:3 and wide screen should be choices. And your amount of possible players doubles.

 

Actually, artillery are a different class, they do have a lot of damage just like the heavy tank, but their armour is mostly that lower then a light tank. And speed isn't necessarily slow on heavy tanks. It depends on their engine, weight and if they are tracked or not. Now the engine and weight can't be seen in the game, only the speed. For the weight you can have a sense if you see the body size. You see a lot of this in warzone2100. Not many games have this. Most just say, the heavier, the slower. Which is partly true, no doubt.

 

1 Thing in particular is that the artillery units are all having a "light tank" engine, while they have a heavy cannon. Thus they are very slow. You see this with the NOD Artillery from C&C TD, RA and the Siege Tank from Dune 2000. Since the creators only looked up speed and did not know the why.

[THE AQIB]

yea true butt i still didnt find out a switch for tht... artillery is hence medium tanks because of the reason X3M mentioned light tank engine and heavy gun...

[Feda]

Artilleries are not tanks actually... What do u mean with 6 light tanks? Arent there 3 sides? Atreides harkonnen ordos?

[THE AQIB]

emperor smugglers and new faction

[Feda]

You gonna add them ALL for multiplayer? Holy crap, I really hope u dont plan such a thing... You'll need a life to balance 6 sides not to mention that fewer sides often offer more balance.

 

Oh, unless they are for singleplayer.. But in that case using a heavy tank for emperor and harkonnen isnt such a problem, the fact that in original dune emp and hark had same combat tank doesnt mean it was shit. Anyways u can name the emp , smuggler and new faction combat tanks how u want, and the main 3 houses' tanks light heavy and medium. If u need some help for names on those new combat tanks I can give u some suggestions if u would want.

[criver]

As for balancing - he can balance them (even if u have them in multiplayer) considering the feedback of testers - that's how champions are balanced in LOL - usually people point out what faction is OP and why.

About resolution - it won't be a problem if it is 4:3 or 16:9 or 16:10 as long as u give an option to the player to choose between them - meaning your code should check all the available resolutions to the vga( some of these reolutions may be with an aspect ratio 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10)  and give the chance for the user to use whatever res he wants. Also - a problem with 2d rts games and resolution would be this:

usually when u have a higher resolution in 2d rts u see more than with a smaller res - basically u'll see a lot more with 1920x1080 than with 800x600 - which isn't right - because your resolution shouldn't really be a factor of how much u see (zoom shold be this factor) - and that's one of the privileges with 3d rts - no matter the resolution u see the same area (everything in the camera frustrum). So if ur game is gonna be 2d u shoudl find a way to work around this. Another problem would be FPS control - your game shouldn't be faster just because your pc is faster - it should have a fixed speed (for example emperor:battle for dune dosn't have a fixed speed in multiplayer which can make the game speed uncontrolable). Here's an example: u want ur unit to move by x meters for 1s - meaning that if ur game runs at 60fps ur unit should move by x/60 meters per frame or if ur game runs at 30 fps ur unit should move by x/30 meters per frame - that way the game speed won't depend on your PC speed (unless th PC is slow - which make cause it to run really laggy).

[THE AQIB]

Well my PC is fast for tht to happen.... Yea but in multiplayer you can choose three factions namely Atriedes, Harkonnen and Ordos...

I still dont know how to code without distorting the screen... In game maker you set the resolution in the room page hence different rooms can have different resolutions....

[criver]

"Well my PC is fast for tht to happen" - that's exactly the problem - fps control is to make the game playable even on fast systems - cause u don't want everyhting x5 speed (imagine your game was written for 60fps and u get 300fps...) - that;s why u should regulate the speed of everything not by frames but by milliseconds.

"I still dont know how to code without distorting the screen..." - didn't get that - what does coding have to do with screen distortion?

" In game maker you set the resolution in the room page hence different rooms can have different resolutions...." - what's this "room page"?

[THE AQIB]

"Well my PC is fast for tht to happen" - that's exactly the problem - fps control is to make the game playable even on fast systems - cause u don't want everyhting x5 speed (imagine your game was written for 60fps and u get 300fps...) - that;s why u should regulate the speed of everything not by frames but by milliseconds.

"I still dont know how to code without distorting the screen..." - didn't get that - what does coding have to do with screen distortion?

" In game maker you set the resolution in the room page hence different rooms can have different resolutions...." - what's this "room page"?

About the game it will be most probably in 30fps or so.... its in the game making properties....

Screen might get distorted while changing resolution but i need some way to fix tht......

Room page is where you create screens like the one you see when you play.....

[THE AQIB]

Posted a few concept arts on the other page...

[criver]

"About the game it will be most probably in 30fps or so.... its in the game making properties...." - I really don't know how game maker manages its main loop so I can't say much about the way it can control fps - but I know that a game doesn't run "most probably" on some fixed fps - fps changes (unless your PC is really fast and u cap them at 60 - which I don't even know if it's possible in game maker). FPS - fames per seconds - how many frames does the graphics engine render per second - usually (if u don't control fps etc.) the game can run at whatever fps depending on your PC. Here's an example:

//pseudo-codeint mil=millisecs();int fps=0;int frames=0;//Main loopWhile(1){   frames=frames+1;   if(millisecs()>mil+1000)     {        fps=frames;        frames=0;     }   UpdateWorld();   RenderWorld();   Flip();}

So u can have as many fps as loops per second ur PC can handle - but usually people don't want the game running at different speeds on different PCs - they want to have a constant or adjustable speed - so rather than depending on fps they make the game speed to depend on time. Hence when having a PC that runs the game at 300fps ur unit should move x/300 meters per frame and if u have a pc running at 60 fps u need to move ur unit by x/60 meters per frame - this way your unit will move with a constant speed on all PCs - x meters per second. U can also cap fps at 60 (but still you need to take into account that ur game may run at 20 fps so u need to adjust everything to that).

 

"Screen might get distorted while changing resolution but i need some way to fix tht......" - I don't understand what u mean by "screen might get distorted".

"Room page is where you create screens like the one you see when you play....." - u mean a window? U mean u can't change the resolution inside the game - let's say from a menu called settings. Here's what I found - 

http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=429221 - now I think I get what u mean by distortion - I think that game maker doesn't actually change the resolution of d3d but rather of the window which causes a distortion rather than really adding more pixel precision - which is really messed up - but that's game maker for u   :P .

 

 

I read something on game maker - so here's about fps:

http://gmc.yoyogames.com/index.php?showtopic=521747

apparently game maker's fps control is messed up big time...

 

In conclusion - game maker sux :P  Maybe there are some ways to work around these issues - but that's the biggest flaw of all these "game making software" - it restricts u on every step and makes ur game a lot slower - basically u trade the difficulty of a programming language for these restrictions, lack of freedom when trying to make something and the slowness factor.

 

P.S. Maybe if there's a command to edit the room properties during runtime u can manage - or even something like deleting the room and the creating it again with different properties during runtime.

[THE AQIB]

there might be... i need to check...

[criver]

Also about the concept art - I'd advise u making the 3d models and then posting screenshots of them - that will be a lot more interesting.

[THE AQIB]

yea but this is just pencil and paper drawings.. but if wanted ill remove it...

[criver]

I don't meant for u to remove it - I said that 3d models will be a lot more interesting(unless u draw like a god).

[THE AQIB]

heh ill redraw for now then....

[vota dc]

Rather confusing point we have here.

• A powered, guided munition that travels through the air or space is known as a missile (or guided missile.)
• A powered, unguided munition is known as a rocket.

Says so, wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile

 

So 2 different wiki pages are saying different things?

Let's continue reading:

Missiles are powered by an engine, generally either a type of rocket or jet engine. Rockets are generally of the solid fuel type for ease of maintenance and fast deployment, although some larger ballistic missiles use liquid fuel rockets. Jet engines are generally used in cruise missiles, most commonly of the turbojet type, due to its relative simplicity and low frontal area.

 

So you could say that missiles can be rockets. That is partly true, the rocket is only a part then.

 

Now search ballista on wiki and become even more confused.

The ballista (Latin, from Greek βαλλίστρα - ballistra^[1] and that from - βάλλω ballō, "throw"),^[2] plural ballistae, was an ancient missile weapon which launched a large projectile at a distant target.

 

Summary:

Missiles can be rockets, and are always used as weapon.

Rockets can be missiles, but can also be used as transportation.

 

Edit:

The small list of 5 weapons: In most games it's in that order. Not necessarily always.

Edit2:

Missiles have more steps of travelling, energy etc. While the rocket just comes in. If the cannon can be dodged by infantry, so can the rocket. I think they where thinking in that direction. Further more, the missiles seemed to do more splash as well in most games, while the rocket was at one target.

 

In english language missile is also used instead of projectile. When I played Ultima Underworld  for the first time I could choose Missile as skill and I tought "wtf is doing a missile among swords, axes and maces?"  Rocket in addition of transport and weapon can be firework while I never heard of a firework referred as missile.

[THE AQIB]

well thinking what else i should change/add/remove in the game cuz ill be starting the base code creation soon.... also want any new innovations.... speak up....

[Feda]

One thing: make sure hark has flame tank... im sure anyone can agree flame tanks are for harks ;)

[THE AQIB]

well tht was already planned and is there on the list in the other post....

[THE AQIB]

before there is work on this game we are progressing to build the emperor mod which will be prequel to the era of war... be sure to play it when it releases...