steel

You'd be surprised at how much stuffing around it took me to get doubleclicking to work. But its done. UI at 1:35am isn't smart. Must sleep

Slocket - I am doing much the same as you with regards to known universe data. I keep the major known universe, plus 2 team known universes from espionage, fleets and what not which will be updated based on events Lost net for a week recently and I got disheartened trying to sort out the editor to load my units into it. So at the moment I will deal with having to just edit my XML files manually to add new units and stuff. Not that it matters as I need the game first and a few test units ( which I already have made up) will do till i finish. PS If anyone knows how to add data to a listBox that isn't database loaded and they could help that would be fantastic. So anyway. Disheartened. I was struggling with some of the UI stuff about my map. The spheres where 3D however the planet names and diplomacy as well as the icons where actually all 2D just efficiently placed thanks to some cool XNA functions. This is a problem when it comes to zooming because although my planets got smaller, all my other 2D UI stuff stayed big. Also another problem was that trying to use my scenegraph to pick the icons was becoming a problem. Eventually I swapped my 2D icon rectangles to 3D quads(alot harder than you would think actually) which are now added to my scenegraph and clickable (yay!) and turned to the other 2D stuff ie. the planet name and diplomacy bars. I had no boundaries set on how far i could zoom out/in so i played around a bit and selected two arbitrary numbers of a decent max level of zoom in and max level zoom out. From this I decided at the halfway point of zoom in and zoom out I would actually remove the diplomacy bar but leave the planet name. From the planet name you can still see who owns what(since planet name is shown in team colours). Also I made how close the 2D name/bar are based on a percentage of the zoom so it keeps a relative distance to and from the planets. So wrapping up: I made the UI way more usable and helpful I set max levels of zoom I learnt a bit more about manipulating models, verticies and shaders I doubled the FPS. Didn't realise I was making two passes of drawing calls. Now easily sits at 900fps on my PC. Which doesn't matter so much when its just a few spheres but might do when 3D space battles become a part of the equation Next thing I have to work on is the Icon GUI's. Really annoying as these require quite a lot of testing and coding to get right. Ill also make all my message boxes from the one UI because I had mixed in the ones from the GameplayManagement Sample and my new UI stuff. Who here is actually C++/C# programmer or training? My code may be ugly but a fresh pair of eyes could be helpful.

Hey Moribundus, thanks for the questions. First up that I would like to say that the biggest aim for me in this project( apart from finishing it one day ) is to have the game have this century graphics. The second biggest problem I wanted to address was the lack of ability to add new content. I want people to be able to add content easily and I dont want the silly restrictions that came with Rebellion. I haven't given game logic much thought so far and if it looks incredibly hard for me to come up with a system to allow edits to game logic then ill just hard-code it. That being said, the more moddability of my project, the happier I will be. When it does get to the stage where it is a playable game, it'll be open source anyway so everyone is free to edit it however they want. I could open source it now but the code can be ugly as hell at times I actually havent gotten to around to coding events or missions yet. Im still working on the basics.Ive invested some time into learning about how XNA plays with XML files and learnt a fair bit over the last few days. There is actually a really good serialization routine built into XNA which makes it very easy to read and write XML files. As far as the database goes, I want to actually get that out of my game now. Seeing as I can easily load data through XML, my last hurdle for my editor is being able to show the loaded data in a ListBox. I am new to creating these type of things so its sort of a WIP while learning style thing The reason I was going to use a basic SQL database was simply because it was very easy to load into a windows form. I could load the data from the database then serialize it into XML form but then i have redundant data and i don't like the idea. I guess Ill just have to learn how to load objects into the ListBox Here are some thoughts on your other Q's On Missions I could code the game to load missions through XML. Just thinking out loud here I could go about reading in details about a mission including a target type so when you choose to send a character on a mission, I would read through my list of loaded missions and match it to the target type. I could add a character type variable to a character so I could distinguish between those who are researchers/recruitment officers and have a usable by variable in the XML file so that I can also allow selection of missions based on that.Like I said havent gotten there yet but thats just off the top of my head. On Events Haven't even looked minorly into how I am going to handle events yet, and since this is my first full game I am going to have to research how I handle it. When I do know I will post up here and let you know.

I meant pointer as in pointing to a memory address

I took a break from playing with UI because of a bit of a bug introduced when XNA 3.1 came in(ie it didn't work anymore) and have been working on my data storage and retrieval stuff. I have my data saving and loading good now. Editor is coming along thanks to working out this problem. I was going to try and load and save through xml but it was getting to be such a hassle till I found an easy way to make databases work in my application. It should now be very easy to update, remove and add new units of any kind. Map editor will be the next big one to work on. I have an example of how to get my program to show in a box so you can edit it graphically. A lot more work involved than just text based editing which the others are. After I have completed this, it will have to be back to the UI as there was a library update released which fixed my problem.

I have Sins lying around on disc somewhere so I will fire it up and have a look. Been a while since I played it. I was going to do mouse scroll to go out and in but Im not sure if some people would get annoyed with it. I am just gonna go with a 3D interface and hope to hell noone gets annoyed with it I've started working on making an editor to easily add planets and what not to a universe. The editor should be able to easily edit all unit information, I want it so you can easily create a scenario for starting positions as well. Shouldn't be too hard as I found some good tutorials on creating this exact sort of thing in Windows Forms. To Slocket and David, I was wondering how you were going about moving units between planets. I was a little stuck about how to do it trying to work out all these different ways creating a Travelling Manager and what not before I thought that maybe the simplest approach is the best. I am thinking have each planet hold a pointer to the unit and if i want them to travel i simply move the pointer to the new planet and make the unit inactive until arrival time. Any better ideas out there?

I find the biggest problem with having a 3D System View is travelling long distances. The only way I can think of solving this is by a) having routes between planets as this would keep long distance scrolling to move fleets down b) going back to the 2D window form of Reb1. Inout and ideas much welcome at this point please

I'm hoping to allow people to have the screen as it is in my current situation. Pressing tab should bring up an overlay similar to the original Rebellion map where you can see the state of the galaxy. Similar to Sins of the Solar Empire, I will be allowing you to switch between the main map where you do your buildings and what not, and the tactical map where you have your battles. Allowing you to bring in reinforments Sins style but still having the full 3D effect of the battles. HOPEFULLY I will see what sort of requirements that will take. I assume you use some form of mesh instancing to allow so many of the ships?

Much appreciated the feedback Slocket. I'm really annoyed with myself as I can't find my little A4 book of design ideas and I have no idea where I was going with the clickable planets and how to display information. Not to mention what I was going to work with next. I remember getting annoyed with trying to make the icons for fleets troops and character clickable even though it was fairly easy to get the planets to be selected. One of the fallbacks of my bad SceneGraph design. I think I will fire up Rebellion and FreeOrion again to get the ideas flowing again. Maybe go buy another book and restart my design ideas. Obviously, it would make more sense to do it on a word document but I find it easier to draw what I want and label in pencil and paper Are you still working away Slocket on yours?

Looking good David. Had some really tough months for a bit there so I had to put my project on the backburner. Back now and intending to give it a good go. I haven't done incredible amounts but what I have done Ill give a quick upload for people to look at. I am thinking about restarting because I have learnt alot the first time through about SceneManagement and the direction I will need to take with some stuff. There isn't any actual gameplay and half the graphics are just place holders so don't get excited. Its more just to show I did work away at this for a couple months and I will be picking up again. http://rapidshare.com/files/252913817/Rebellion2_0_5_0_1.rar.html Required I believe is Microsoft .NET 3.5(http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=en) and XNA 3.0 redistributable(http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=6521d889-5414-49b8-ab32-e3fff05a4c50&displaylang=en) On an excited note, MS released XNA 3.1 which has enhanced sounds as well as including Video Playback as a part of their API. Very happy as when I have finished the game I intend to make proper movie cutscenes as per original star wars using high resolution and good quality lighting. PPS. Has everyone seen the Star Wars The Old Republic Storyline trailer. Very good watch.

I dont get as much time to work on this anymore and not having access to the Internet is a pain in the ass when trying to work out how to code some things (ie XML loading in XNA so if anyone knows how please let me know ) But the game is moving along still Basically, I have the main menu and settings for resolution done. Splash screen on the startup. After the main menu, I originally just had 400 systems looped through and created just to test how it handles. Get around 350 FPS, 400 if i remove the physics stuff which I may do if i cant find a reason to use it Memory usage sits at around 80MB with that many planets but I am pretty sure that will increase a fair amount after some time playing. I havent optimised anything at all, so that will come a bit later. Each system has 3 placeholder rectangle above and to the right for characters, troops and ships which are currently not clickable (but easy to add now i know how to do it) which will bring up a list of what each list holds. Has the diplomacy bar as well as name of the system below each star. I have click detection on the planets which when left clicked on it brings up a GUI Window with some basic details of the system and a placeholder for an image. That window has several tabs, one for troops, ships, facilities where you can build from. I havent completed those tabs yet but basically it will have a scroll box which will read from the types you are able to build, and display them, then a simple Quantity to build. An okay button to add it to the queue. Below this selection will show the queue of 3 boxes showing what is queued, how many, and how long till completion. Below that will be a remove button, so you can clear the queue. Still plenty to do thats for sure and every time I add something it reminds me of 4000 other things I will need to add In about a week or two Ill try and upload a prelim work of the 2D stuff for you guys to have a look at. I wouldnt call it a game yet, more like a pretty database but that will come with time. On another note, anyone willing to throw up a nice Main Menu screen in png format would be greatly appreciated. I am not an artist by any means and 90% of what I am using currently is placeholder graphics.

Very easy to allow a choice, but with the choice comes additional artwork and models What I think I will do is settle for using default Rebellion timeline/ships to start with then add additional scenarios later.

Anyone put any thought into which era to use for Rebellion2? Sticking with Reb1 Era? I was thinking maybe pre-ANH or post-ROTJ would be good as well as the original post-ANH would make good scenarios.

Think you will find is that the biggest problem is level of development for each of the developers. Everyone is comfortable with what they are used to. Whether its David in Java, yourself in C++/GL and what not. I have completed 2nd year level university courses in C++ and I am still kind of worried that I cant easily follow your code. At the same time as NordWind said, most of us are learning as we go. On that note, I do have the engine completed to a satisfactory level for me, and as soon as I have most of the main map done I will release to group of the active people here on the forums to recieve feedback on Design and get further ideas from everyone. It wont have the 3D map done, though with the engine well developed I will certainly be able to bring that up fairly quickly. I expect that should take about 2 months so looking at an early May release hopefully.

Isnt FreeOrion open source anyway?

Sent you an email Razz

I do have a couple sitting in my Outbox... Stoopid site David, email me. See above for address

By the way Evaders, MORE than open to names. Considering it a working title

I PM'd each of Slocket, JanDies, DavidAdas and you as well Moribundas. Not sure if all my PM's went through or anything because only reply i got was from slocket. If you are interested, i would much rather work within a team. And your not the only one who is frustrated by it. I saw 3 or 4 projects all being worked on, yet there would be much more progress if we were working together. I am not the best coder in the world but I have a hell of a lot of free time at the moment, and am learning like crazy. Still got my CG books left from University plus an abundant supply of online documentation. The best part of having more than 1 person is getting multiple inputs on the design. Will only make for a better game. MSN if you got it, we can have a chat and see if we can get this going: a_w_mijatovic@hotmail.com

Happiness cannot describe my first awesome sun cranking out Just finished it then. Needs some touchup but looks good. This is officially the first piece I have created for the game rather than just working on the framework

Announcement of a New Project This is my announcement for my own Rebellion2 project. I tried for a while to join one of the other developers working on their own but either I dont get a response or it just wont work. I recently cut my hours back at work and retarted another University degree so first year subjects are so easy that I have plenty of free time to work on this. Most days I aim to put in at least 4 or 5 hours of work into the project. I have been playing around in a few different environments to create this and have been steadily working on a design document for the last few weeks and going over my old game design books to get some ideas on how to go about this. I tried out C++ with OGRE, Irrilicht and DarkBasic Pro, and recently started with C#/XNA which has been my final chosen platform. Although this restricts Games to being deployed on Windows, XNA is a very powerful API and I am concentrate more on the game and less on the low-level details. Even though I had to learn C# for it, it was pretty easy and very quick to learn Community Involvement I hope this will become a large part of my project. Anyone willing to help out is more than welcome to help. Artwork: is my biggest problem as I have had very little experience with artwork. Good 3D Models and Textures, Nice looking planet textures. All help will be welcome Programming: Anyone competent in C#/XNA welcome. Its pretty easy to learn as well Design: Biggest help section I reckon. A good design will be the key to making this game work. Which leads me to what I have gotten going so far. Set up a GameStateManagement section to swap between the different menus and game states. Got a nice GUI window system plugin that works a treat Menu works fine and I found a really cool sample to create a sun which will look really awesome in-game I am starting work on the world now. Anyone wanting to exchange ideas: Email: mijatovic@iinet.net.au Xfire: steel86 Or simply post on the forums. I usually check here twice a day. thanks guys in advance for all help

Would be pretty simple to implement both actually. You can stop the world update routine on everything else and just run the simulation

To be fair JanDeis, thats what all games should be made like these days Im doing the same on mine. I am building the core engine and all that which will load the information from XML files to create the different types of units. I will eventually make an editor (really easy to make in C# btw) so people dont have to do it by hand as well

What about the battles? Are everyone happy with how it is now where you command a battle? Or would people prefer a more seamless occurance where a battle takes place on the main map and you can give orders to your units, and then go back to your campaign while they fight it out. Would give the option to bring in reinforments from the campaign map unlike the current system.... Just a thought.

Well technically you could do a high render scene pass using the models and it would look amazing. and if you bought the movie soundtracks you could possibly use them as music to the scene. I would love to do a full intro and some FMV's for the game Duel of the Fates intro anyone???