JARTS - (j)ust (a)nother (r)eal (t)ime (s)trategy game

The Partridge Family were neither partridges nor a family. Discuss.
Florian3321
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Re: JARTS - (j)ust (a)nother (r)eal (t)ime (s)trategy game

Post by Florian3321 » October 14th, 2017, 3:21 pm

Looks really nice man!!
And nice to see another German here ;)

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SlevinKelevra
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Re: JARTS - (j)ust (a)nother (r)eal (t)ime (s)trategy game

Post by SlevinKelevra » October 16th, 2017, 10:00 pm

Thx Florian!

Worked on scrolling the last 2 days. Now I can use maps bigger than the screen. You can scroll by moving the mouse to the border of the screen or while holding the right mouse button.

Added a bigger desert map and more units to play around with. Code is merged into the master branch.

Have fun!
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chili
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Re: JARTS - (j)ust (a)nother (r)eal (t)ime (s)trategy game

Post by chili » October 18th, 2017, 1:40 am

Glad to see progress being made on your game Slevin, I'll have to check out the latest. Be sure that next time I do some show and tell you'll be given the prime location ;)
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Re: JARTS - (j)ust (a)nother (r)eal (t)ime (s)trategy game

Post by chili » October 21st, 2017, 4:19 am

Well, I checked out the latest from JARTS.

1st of all, is the icon giving me the middle finger? Rude.

The biggest change that stuck out for me was the ability to scroll. Looking good man! Not sure, but the background sound didn't seem to be changing.

Some minor things that I thought of while trying it out were:

1) The way the attack animation "snaps" to the enemy makes the controls feel less responsive. Changing the cursor is a must, but i think it should still move with the mouse to give the best gamefeel. Same for the scrolling arrows. And when you mouse over your unit and the cursor disappears.

2) The right-click scroll is well-done, but I think most players would rather be using kbd scrolling. You don't wanna have to click to scroll when you got your units selected.

3) The outlines on some units maybe need to go. Might wanna implement alpha blending for a number of reasons (good for effects as well, like explosions).

Now I looked at the code, and it looks good. Easy to follow. Could benefit from more modularity probably (stuff like Unit is pretty monolithic), but if it is working for you it seems okay. I didn't have trouble understanding it, so that is the main thing.

I think the biggest change I would make is harnessing polymorphism / inheritance. Great opportunity to elimite a lot of enums and switches with polymorphic behavior, improving code cohesion (all tank code together, not mixed up with plane code, for example). But since you mentioned you're not comfortable with inheritance, I would not suggest trying it now here. You might just kill your projects with a messy polymorph implementation. What you've got here can get the job done too.

Oh, and speaking of enums, you don't need to do = 0 for the first enum value, it is guaranteed to start by 0 by default, as per the standard.
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SlevinKelevra
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Re: JARTS - (j)ust (a)nother (r)eal (t)ime (s)trategy game

Post by SlevinKelevra » October 21st, 2017, 11:28 am

Thank you for your detailed comment Chili!
chili wrote: 1st of all, is the icon giving me the middle finger? Rude.
Yea, special present for you!
chili wrote: The biggest change that stuck out for me was the ability to scroll. Looking good man! Not sure, but the background sound didn't seem to be changing.
Scrolling was one big topic, yes. The other were some fight actions: animations, automatic attacking, automatic following, etc. Regarding the background sound: there is only one file playing in a loop (this wind sound). Should not be changing at all.
chili wrote: 1) The way the attack animation "snaps" to the enemy makes the controls feel less responsive. Changing the cursor is a must, but i think it should still move with the mouse to give the best gamefeel. Same for the scrolling arrows. And when you mouse over your unit and the cursor disappears.
I agree by the attack animation "snapping", looks really strange. I will change it. I have tried several solutions for the scrolling arrows, the very first one was to let them always move with the mouse. But it didnt look that good imo... Is it what you are suggesting? Lastly mouse over own units: would you like the cursor not to disappear? This might look better, yes. Will try it out.
chili wrote: 2) The right-click scroll is well-done, but I think most players would rather be using kbd scrolling. You don't wanna have to click to scroll when you got your units selected.
Fully agree! Selected units and right-click-scrolling is actually a bug! It was not meant to work in this way. I will add kbd scrolling.
chili wrote: 3) The outlines on some units maybe need to go. Might wanna implement alpha blending for a number of reasons (good for effects as well, like explosions).
Could you explain in more detail, what I should do here respectively where exactly the alpha blending would help?
chili wrote: I think the biggest change I would make is harnessing polymorphism / inheritance. Great opportunity to elimite a lot of enums and switches with polymorphic behavior, improving code cohesion (all tank code together, not mixed up with plane code, for example). But since you mentioned you're not comfortable with inheritance, I would not suggest trying it now here. You might just kill your projects with a messy polymorph implementation. What you've got here can get the job done too.
What I meant was that I wanted to use only topics (c++ techniques) you have already covered in your tutorials. Will add polymorphism / inheritance in future for sure.
chili wrote: Oh, and speaking of enums, you don't need to do = 0 for the first enum value, it is guaranteed to start by 0 by default, as per the standard.
To be honest, I dont remember anymore, why I am exactly doing it. Thought I heard/read someday that it would be safer.
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SlevinKelevra
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Re: JARTS - (j)ust (a)nother (r)eal (t)ime (s)trategy game

Post by SlevinKelevra » October 25th, 2017, 1:40 pm

- added scrolling with keys (arrow keys or "WASD")
- fixed cursor animation "snapping"
- fixed right-click-scrolling bug (with selected unit(s))

Working on the action bar at the moment ("action_bar" branch). It will contain a minimap and buildings/units, which can be created. This part can take some time though :)
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SlevinKelevra
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Re: JARTS - (j)ust (a)nother (r)eal (t)ime (s)trategy game

Post by SlevinKelevra » October 26th, 2017, 10:04 pm

Basic functionalities of the action bar are implemented (and merged into the master branch):
- 2 example buildings (barracks and factory)
- left-click on one of those enables the "placing" mode
- in placing mode you can go over the map and search for enough space for the building (indicated by red/green tile rects)
- dummy texts are added to the remaining parts of the action bar (will be implemented soon)

Additionally I have made some improvements to the cursor class, like not displaying the scrolling arrows when an edge of the map is reached.

Next I want to complete the building class and implement the actual placing on the map.
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Re: JARTS - (j)ust (a)nother (r)eal (t)ime (s)trategy game

Post by chili » October 30th, 2017, 12:19 pm

SlevinKelevra wrote:chili wrote:
3) The outlines on some units maybe need to go. Might wanna implement alpha blending for a number of reasons (good for effects as well, like explosions).

Could you explain in more detail, what I should do here respectively where exactly the alpha blending would help?
Take a look at these images. The white outline on the unit and the generally jagged pixelated outline of the explosion are 2 examples of where this would help. Alpha blending would allow for a lot more graceful / smooth edges.
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