Re: OPEN SOURCE SEIV Grass Roots Movement
 

instar,
i will check into the for dummies books, i have actually used several of them for other items. most tend to be well writen from what i have read. i have two books on c++ also borlands c++. i am looking at trying to take some courses but my work schedule fluctuates, so hard to sign up for actually classes. may need to see about Online class. all i have managed to take so far is intro to structured programming and 1 other class. both a long time ago.

anyone know of any open source strategy games out there in c or c++ that i can look at for guidance/inspiration (something to make me go, see i can do something like this...see this is how to do it).

[ January 27, 2003, 04:10: Message edited by: desdinova ]

Re: OPEN SOURCE SEIV Grass Roots Movement
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Leaky shields and armor components will also help greatly in that regard.
Any ship which is hit will take at least some permanent damage, and with leaky armor, a ship can become crippled to uselessness long before it is actually destroyed.
Players who don't adjust their strategies in order to spread the damage around will be caught shooting at dead hulks while the enemies lay waste to their fleet.

Re: OPEN SOURCE SEIV Grass Roots Movement
 

Yep SJ. What you call "leaky armor", I call "Armored Structure" - high-structure, low-cost components that don't have the "Armor - hit first" ability.

PvK

Re: OPEN SOURCE SEIV Grass Roots Movement
 

I remember hearing somewhere that SEII and possibly SEIII where going to go freeware.

Re: OPEN SOURCE SEIV Grass Roots Movement
 

I still don't know who this mysterious 'Arron' is that Tesco keeps referring to... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif

I don't see him giving the code up, it is afterall, his means of support.

Re: OPEN SOURCE SEIV Grass Roots Movement
 

OT a little, desdinova, I would recommend simply using your current programming experience. Take a look at a game, any game, from something as simple as tic-tac-toe up to things like pac-man or tetris, up to a game as complex as SEIV, and just think of what you would need to do to program it. That would really be the best way to learn game programming, IMHO, just doing it. If those books are the kind I think they are (a la "Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus"), you should be able to pick up the graphical side. As a personal exercise (and partially as a result of boredom), I started writing out the basic data structures needed for a SEIV-like game. Almost like SEIV, except I tweaked it a little, so there's no limits on total players, ships, units, systems, etc. and it's on a coordinate system. Just doing that for a few days really helped solidify my knowledge in areas of C++ that I had only begun to learn a few weeks before (mainly, I wrote a templated double-linked list from scratch, then debugged it many many times).

So, just pick a simple game, take a little time to outline what you would need to do to make the game (ie, card game, make the deck, think of ways to code-ify the rules, etc), then start. Then just keep on increasing the complexity, you'll learn more and more each time.

(BTW, please don't ask for the code I wrote, it is vastly incomplete, and I would like to finish it as an exercise before handing it out).

Re: OPEN SOURCE SEIV Grass Roots Movement
 

Another good way that I've seen battles made more even is to start the accuracy at 50%, then have it decrease by 3% per square. You then make your sensors twice as effective as ECM so that you can get a maximum to-hit of 99% at a range of 1 only if you have a 50% advantage in either sensors or aggressiveness. It works very well, and makes it so it's not so easy to get unhittable ships.

Re: OPEN SOURCE SEIV Grass Roots Movement
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, if memory serves, MM was going to make a setting where SE4 could be set to use external combat modules. If that was done you could make a Ground Combat module without having to get the SE4 source code.

Re: OPEN SOURCE SEIV Grass Roots Movement
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Well, if memory serves, MM was going to make a setting where SE4 could be set to use external combat modules. If that was done you could make a Ground Combat module without having to get the SE4 source code.</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Really? I know I've suggested it, but I didn't think it was ever accepted for SE4.

PvK

Re: OPEN SOURCE SEIV Grass Roots Movement
 

Will,
thanks for the info. you are correct some of the books are the tricks of the gaming gurus plus teach yourself game programming in 21 days (just picked it up) and a few others. the tygpi21d looks like it will help me more than the gurus books. you are correct though the only way to do it is practice.