THIS IS STILL A THING

I'M BACK.  It's been exactly two months since the last post.  In that time, winter break has come and gone and now winter quarter is half way done.  In that time I'll admit that I have been neglecting Mega-Risk.  Unreal C++ scares me.

But over the last two weeks I finally took the time to finish (?) a Game Dev Document and start writing a small amount of code.  I'm still very unfamiliar with the UE4 API and at this point I have no idea what is going to work.  The basic plan here is to essentially port the majority of the prototype blueprints (especially the infrastructure stuff) to code and then use Blueprints for some simple stuff.  Thankfully, Unreal has multiple example projects that I've been studying to see how to blend C++ and blueprints.

Since I've already got most of the stuff plotted out, it hopefully won't take too horrendously long to get everything up to the point of the prototype.  I personally would like to see the project get there by summer, but who knows what will happen.

Hope to be back here soon with a good, solid update.


P.S. We finally got source control working!  WOOOOOO

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.