• Where can we play? Introducing the Map

    Next concept is a brief description of the so called ‘map’ where all of the action will take place.

    All of this entity defining is all well and good, but what do these entities do? As there needs to be a place where these entities live and do things, I am now defining the ‘Map’ or ‘Battle’ or ‘Arena’ or whatever theming that is desired. I will refer to these general concepts as the map going forward. Ultimately, the map is where all of the action will take place.

    There is a big discussion around square grid or hex grid. I believe that the hex grid is commonly considered to be superior as it does allow more movement (6 directions rather than 4) which leads to more natural gameplay. I however have decided to stick with the good old fashioned square grid as I think that it will be much easier to make and get my head round.

    So there you have it really, I have a square grid, plonk the entities on it and add some core gameplay concepts I.e teams, AI, win conditions etc and bish bash bosh, I have a game. Easy right!? Well of course there is a lot of work to go and there will need to be some decision over what these entities can actually do – as even though configuration will define all of the properties there does need to be some structure to the configuration and how they relate to gameplay.

    I think for now though I will leave that discussion up till next time…

  • Diving in – Introducing the concept of Entities and Tags

    Introducing one of the core concepts in the game, entities and tags. This will ultimately be what makes this game customisable.

    One of the core concepts that will power the game is the creation of entities and tags.

    This is actually the second iteration of the game. Initially I was adding classes for each ‘entity’ I.e I was making a class for ‘Infantry’ in the code. This is great and all assuming that you know what your game will be but I have currently no idea – ‘Infantry’ in fact is just a placeholder. As mentioned in my first post I have decided to go with the concept of more of an engine than a finished game per-say. Therefore I have scrapped that hard coded concept of each entity and came up with essentially a configuration file which defines how each Entity behaves.

    To clear up any confusion, I will give a quick definition of an entity in relations to this game:

    Entity: Every single gameplay item that a player will interact with during the core game loop will be an entity. Each map/stage will be filled with such entities where their look and behaviour are defined by the given configuration. Entities can be directly player intractable e.g units, buildings; or can be more passive or cosmetic e.g terrain, signs etc.

    The configuration which will define all properties of an entity will be defined in a json (text with structure) file. I have also considered the concept of having default values for the configuration. For example, if you wanted to define a tank and an infantry unit, there may be common configuration between the two I.e can move, cant fly, cant produce other units etc. Intruducing therefore the concept of the Tag:

    Tag: A tag defines certain entity properties without being an entity itself. Each entity can be given one or more tags which when the game initialises, will pull the tag values into each tagged entity as its defaults, being overwritten by any values given on the entity itself.

    For example, imagine having the following tags with properties:

    • Units: Can move and attack, Can be attacked
    • IndirectUnit: Cannot move and attack

    With the following defined entities:

    • Infantry: Tags: <Units>, Range 1
    • Artillery: Tags: <Units, IndirectUnit>, Range 2

    Results in:

    • Infantry: Can move and attack, Can be attacked, Range 1
    • Artillery: Cannot move and attack, Can be attacked, Range 2

    As you can see, each final entity can have much less configuration as it can be built up from tags of similarly grouped sub-configuration

    Of course with a very well documented configuration, hopefully this will lead to a usable system where one can define any iteration of the game that you can imagine.

  • Hello World! Introducing Realm Tactics

    This is the first post. Introducing Realm Tactics

    Hello World! This is my first post about a so called project ‘Realm Tactics’ game. Concept: I absolutely loved the game ‘Advanced Wars’ back on the Game Boy advanced. So much so that when finally getting round to making something myself, it is a natural choice of game styles.

    The Vision:

    Create a game/engine where creating new maps, units, buildings and everything else is just config and can be done by anyone – ultimately I want users to actually make the entertaining things and I (an engineer) can focus solely on the engine. Some may call that lazy but I’m happy to play to my skills.

    Nitty Gritty:

    As my love of the game style was ultimately born on a GameBoy, a hand-held console, this will hopefully materialise as an Android (and hopefully Iphone) app. Definitely not bounded by that but playing on the toilet is definitely how I imagine people will be using my creation (as glamorous as that sounds!)

    The basic gameplay would involve moving things around a square grid – usually themed as some sort of battle where you have to outmaneuver and defeat your opponent but I don’t necessarily want to be constrained by that. That is a very loose description and engineering constrains will require the first iterations to be much more locked in. I will create a set of functions that each entity can perform I.e movement, attack, building, capturing etc and using that some interesting game types can be put together. These will all be packed up with different graphical components and hopefully some interesting story lines. All of this is very vague at the moment but this will be an ongoing development project.

    The How:

    I don’t know yet how ‘technical’ I am going to get in this blog but thought I would get things started. I have recently picked up using Unity and am relatively comfortable with that environment (at least for nothing too flashy). This will be coded in C# as I do love a bit of well structured object oriented programming. As an ex-java developer I am happy to get stuck in with the code so not worried on that side. I have never done graphics before so, as mentioned earlier, it would be great to eventually (I mean in the far and distance future) to get things more community created.

    Help Wanted:

    This currently is a solo project but I would love to work with someone – especially for people with all the skills that I currently don’t have as unfortunately that is quite a bit. If anyone has a passion and would love to get stuck into programming, artwork, sound, storytelling, level design, publicising…. and everything else under the sun then feel free to get in contact!