Sitting on the dock of the bay...

...wasting time. I love Otis Redding. Anyway, the worst thing about developing this game is the waiting. Will bad things come out of that cave? Will they attack me? Will I win? (winning is pretty unlikely with just a king).
So why am I waiting for bad things during the day when they come out at night? Actually, it is night-time, I've turned on the dev lighting so I can see properly.

Things you'll never see in the game #2

Lighting test. Seems to be handling 100+ lights with no problems.
Something you will see in the game is caves;

Bad things come out of caves - especially at night, so don't build near them! Unless you can be bothered to block them off...

Damn snipers!

Sorry I've been a bit quiet, I got a bit diverted by Far Cry 2 - lots of driving/boating but enough bangs to keep me happy! (Hey guys, remember to buy fairtrade diamonds!).
Back in the land of SMW, I've been rethinking the game data structure to make it more efficient at culling distant objects during searches. Currently every unit gets checked against every other unit and structure - not so efficient when there's 1000s of them!

Mon Dieu! C'est un morceau de merde!

Pardon my french, but this was my opinion after sitting back and taking an overview of the AI system. I'm going to have to do some serious rewriting of parts of it (though I have an idea that influence maps may save the day). Problems such as long-range path-finding, unit convergence, finding good building spots and believable fleeing behaviour are all there to be solved. Good thing I like a challenge!

Silent, upon a peak in Darien

Ooh, Look! Lots of natives to kill and rob! Well, I suppose you can't make an empire without breaking heads.
The more I tinker with the AI the more willfully obtuse it becomes. It's almost as if it has a mind of it's own...

GI blues

GI standing for Genuine Imbecility, which is what my AI players are displaying so far. In this picture Kzud sends another unit of infantry to their deaths for the nth time. I suspect that balancing the AI might prove to be a delicate business...

AI before AE...

Trying to get the indigenous players' AI to behave believably today. They can create buildings and units, the questions now remaining are where and when...

Back in harness

Phew! Now that penguin's been saved I can get on with SMW. I've added some 'create unit' buttons to the GUI but I'm not totally happy with them - they look too similar to the owned unit icons. Oh well, they'll do for now.

Panicky penguin 2

Got a bit distracted by my poor penguin. Try to save him here!

Panicky penguin

A little break sometimes doesn't hurt, so I'm working on a nice, simple game for this year's Java 4K competition.
2708 bytes used so far, 1387 to go!

Synchy state

I think I've got all the clients working in synch... That's the trouble with multiplayer games, testing can be such a faff. Still, after the hilarious 'Hey, we both won!' bugs in SMW1 multiplayer, it's as well to make sure!

Keep on the server side

Spent today rearranging the server. The whole game state lives on the server to prevent cheating and ensure concurrency between clients. Luckily the units don't move very fast.

Selecting units is no longer a drag

 

Well, it is a drag... Oh, you know what I mean!

Buddy can you spare a dime?

Spent most of today trying to negotiate some funding for the game - why does one government department never know what another is doing?

Zoom

 

I got bored of peering at distant things so I added a zoom feature.

Things you'll never see in the game #1

Chest farming - well, I have to test them somehow!

BTW I've added reactions to posts (see below) so you can let me know which bits you like or dislike.

Happiness is a large chest

Chests are dotted around the landscape and may (or may not) contain goodies, so it's worth taking a peek into the next valley.

How did that horse get up there?

Walls can now also be manned. I haven't decided what happens to a unit if the wall it's stood on gets destroyed - should they take damage or can they jump to safety?

I can see my house from up here!

Units can now occupy towers. I think I'll have to modify the walls so they can be manned too.

Shrub Clumping

Still fiddling with the resource generation parameters. Did a little shrub and tree clumping meantime.

I'm waiting for my man

Ok, an hour to wait for more stuff is waaay too long. I'll try 10 minutes.