OT = How Does Shrapnel Stay In Business

[Alpha Kodiak]

quote:

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Originally posted by Baron Munchausen:
This sounds fine for the 'old school' wargame that uses ascii graphics to represent the planets and ships! I can believe that very elaborate games can be designed with relatively little code if all you are doing is the simulation mechanics of the game itself. What will kill you is making the GUI interface to all the various aspects of the game so people can play the way they expect with the mouse/trackball/whatever. Displaying all the fancy dialog boxes and adding all the 'mouse events' will take several times the code of the game engine itself, I think. Maybe you could make a client/server system like VGA Planets? Or maybe the latest VGA Planets is already everything you had in mind for this project?

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Actually, if you are smart about how you set it up, the GUI doesn't have to require that much code. It does require a lot of planning and design, but the right tools can supply most of the handlers you need. If you don't properly design it, however....