Kback(ish)

Figured I'd pop in here for a quick update.  Fall quarter is about done so Mega-Risk production should resume in a few days.  In the mean time, I forgot to post about one very important development:  AI works.  I forget how it was made to work, but it works.  Also, since both Conrad(?) and I know C++, I figured we'd start on THE REAL VERSION.

If I haven't said so before, this whole thing has been a prototype.  With a team of seasoned professionals who know UE4 inside-out and spend all day working, all the work cataloged in this blog probably would have taken a month or less.  Unfortunately, we are none of these things and this has taken about a year.

THE REAL VERSION will use both C++ and Blueprints and will be released to people to download and put on their computers and use.  I think I'll start that up after fall quarter ends.  I know multiplayer never got prototyped but it is supposed to be done in code so I'm hoping our C++ will make it work.

STATUS UPDATE

I don't have any actual progress to show off.  Nothing has happened in the past few weeks.  Conrad has been trying out a bunch of new ideas and has started planning out another game with Ethan (if you don't know who that is he knows lots about programming but doesn't actively work on Mega-Risk).

Meanwhile, I have had school things.  Homework has gotten more intense and on top of that I have to compile a portfolio for a college interview comign up at the end of the month.

So, basically, I don't see any new stuffage being done for M-R anytime soon.  I'll keep this thing updated if an unexpected development develops.

Hi

Hello, all you nonexistant people!  It's time for another post!

Basically all that's gotten done in the way of central Mega-Risk development is that I've gotten 2/3 Castle Cards working.  Reinforcements, check.  General, check.  Marshal, not check.  Why not marshal?  Well, to put it simply, it's nearly untestable right now.

The way marshal works is that a defending player can play the card during a single battle to increase his highest die roll by one.  So if he rolled a 4 and a 6, the 6 would become an otherwise-impossible 7 and nothing would happen to the 4.

In order to do this, I'd have to give the defender a chance to play a marshal if he get's invaded.  As it stands, there's no way for the player's territories to be invaded.  The AI is broken to the point of unusable and multiplayer is in a similar state.  So, I'll hold off on developing that until one of those things starts working.

P.S.  I mentioned that this was the only thing that's happened in central development.  Conrad has conjured up a system that can basically generate random maps with landmasses containing multiple territories.  It's still rough around the edges but it's very promising.  Hopefully we'll see a fully-fledged random map generator in the future?

NEXT TIME: Probably AI or Multiplayer.  I mean it this time, too.  If you head over to the Trello page you'll see those are basically the only major things left to do unless I decide to set up game stats.

On the Matter of Inactivity

To those of you who might be reading this blog and are expecting a new post soon, this is it.  This is the post.  It's a post to tell you that there will be no post, which doesn't make any sense but it exists anyway, questioning all laws of logic.

Anyway, school started up again and on top of that the I'll be taking the SATs next week.  This means that cramming is a very real thing that actually happens.  On top of that, the entire family is currently helping Dad recover from a back/hip injury.

All that stuff adds up to a lot of time not being spent on Mega-Risk.  I should be back in comission in another week or so, maybe next Sunday, but until then Conrad will probably be the main guy working on stuff.

However, I won't leave you with zero status updates.  Stuff has been worked on since the start of the month.  Specifically, I've been trying to get Control Territories/Continents (my term for Pirate Islands and RGB Islands) to exist and Conrad has been trying to find a way to make that magical thing known as multiplayer to work.  The two of us have also been taking turns trying to get the AI to function properly.

So at least the last few weeks haven't been a total loss.

NEW MAP (Mega-Risk v.Proto_0.0.4)

My god, making the full Mega-Risk map took forever.  Two straight days of cutting up the map meshes, inserting all of the territories, manually creating all of the borders, and setting up the adjacents for every one of the 200+ territories in the map.

But now the full map is done.

I also managed to add continents and those UI tweaks I talked about in the last post.  Also, Conrad made a bunch of seriously amazing looking sea-lines.  Now all that's left is some sort of playability in the form of AI or Multiplayer.  Conrad's made some headway in the MP department so I'm not sure what will be done first.

Once one of those is done, I suppose it'll be time to upload a downloadable release for testing purposes before we dive into all the Mega-Risky goodness.

Here, have some screenies:

Since a substantial amount of working thigns have been added, I suppose it's time for a new pseudo-release.

Mega-Risk v.Proto_0.0.4

Changelog:

- Made new 'Proto2' map

- Added Continents

- Added Sea Lines
- Added Fortresses

- Tweaked Whirlpool texture to make it more realistic

- UI adjustments

- A couple more bug fixes

Territory Cards

After the greatest headache since Invasion, there are now Territory Cards in Mega-Risk.  Everything but the troop scaling is in there, mainly because I haven't taken the time to find out what formula Risk uses for that thing.  Everything else works, though.

I'm hoping to get a full playable 'release' (with possibility of actual downloadable release) out in the next couple of weeks.  On the todo list for that to happen is:

• Finish the AI (if we can't get multiplayer working we should at least finish that)
• Make some UI adjustments to make everything look nicer
• Fix that months-old minor Invasion bug where the virtual dice won't roll twice. (?)
• Sea-Lines
• More territories and continents.

So, basically, a bunch of easy stuff and the AI. :D

I'm really looking forward to getting all this base stuff finally done and out of the way so we can finally do what UE4 was made to do and make everything look PRETTYFUL.

Screenies/GIFs probably coming later.

Turns and Disaster Cards(Mega-Risk v.Proto_0.0.3)

Some more stuff happened last month!  After grappling on and off with the problem known as multiplayer, I realized that I don't necessarily need to get that done right away.
This epiphany led me to question the nature of the entire project.  I eventually found myself slightly revamping THE ENTIRE INFRASTRUCTURE (again) after I found out that instances (the thing we had been using to handle UI and a bunch of other stuff) are new, poorly documented, and didn't do what I wanted them to do.  So, I deleted ours and put all the code it contained in other places, which fixed a buttload of problems.

A few minor bugfixes later, and I was ready to implement the myserious things known as TURNS.  As of right now, I've put in the reinforcement and attack stages of Risk as well as the first fully Mega-Risk concept so far: DISASTER CARDS.

For those of you who've never played the original Mega-Risk, disaster cards are in-game events that happen every so often in-between turns.  They grab a random territory and do something to make the owner (an sometimes all adjacent territory's owners) suffer.  They could be anything from a lightning storm that halves the troop count to a deadly doomsday device that reduces everyone's troop count to 1.

I've got those working now.

So, all in all, the project is coming aloong nicely and, should the bug gods be kind, may be in a "playable" state before school starts!

OH, and I suppose this warrents a new 'release'.  It's time for:

Mega-Risk v.Proto_0.0.3
Changelog:
- Removed GameInstance
- Added turn-locked territory selection
- Added reinforcement stage
 - When a territory is selected, its troop count goes up by one.
- Added Disaster Cards/Events(I like that name better)
 - Happen at the end of a round
 - Select a random territory and affect its troop count in some way
- Added Top Bar
 - Displays a variety of info including player's team, total troops, and other stuff
 - Holds constantly-available buttons such as End Turn and In-Game Menu
- Added post-invasion troop movement
 - Widget spawns after victory that lets players move a number of troops from the attacker to attacking territory.

Hmm, looking at that changelog it appears I added some stuff I didn't mention.  Oh well.

I was going to post some GIFs but my screen recorder is giving me some problems.  Once it's fixed I'll update this post.