https://www.saschawillems.de/tags/phase-2/ Recent content in phase-2 on Sascha Willems Hugo -- gohugo.io de-de webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) Mon, 24 Jun 2013 18:13:09 +0000 https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/06/24/going-multi-platform-part-6-mac-osx/ Mon, 24 Jun 2013 18:13:09 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/06/24/going-multi-platform-part-6-mac-osx/ After hard weeks of work, february finally saw the release of a linux version for Projekt Weltherrscher - Phase. This marked the first step on my journey to go multi-platform, something to too easy for a game that was made on and for windows (with an IDE that actually only runs on windows). But those that are into multi-platform development know how close Mac OSX and linux are in terms of coding (OSX is based on Darwin which is based on unix), so after getting the game to run on linux the next (natural) step would have been porting it to Mac OSX. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/05/28/projekt-w-finally-gets-its-own-theme-song/ Tue, 28 May 2013 17:55:55 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/05/28/projekt-w-finally-gets-its-own-theme-song/ After all the years that Projekt “W” has been in development the game finally has it’s very own theme song! While adding in new sounds (and replacing old ones) I found the music of the current build to be kinda unfitting and decided to dig through the depths of the internet to find some (free) tracks that would be a better fit for the game’s mood (especially with the new space backdrops). https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/05/10/the-challenges-of-a-games-sound-design/ Fri, 10 May 2013 18:08:19 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/05/10/the-challenges-of-a-games-sound-design/ Usually I’d add some nice screenshots to show off progress on “Phase 2”, but this time it’s an area of game development that’s pretty hard to show off in screenshots : Sound design. I find this is one of the hardest parts as far as game design goes, at least for me. I do all the parts of game development on my own (design, code, content, etc.) but when it comes down to sound design, the result is usually so bad or bland that (I guess) most people just turn it off. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/05/02/introducing-the-ai-builder/ Thu, 02 May 2013 20:00:57 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/05/02/introducing-the-ai-builder/ The next public release of “Phase 2” will include a new feature, the AI builder. Managing your regions (constructing and upgrading buildings) becomes more and more tedious the longer a game has been going on, and once you own dozens of regions later on in the game that you’ll have to manage, this task gets very repetitive and takes up a lot of your time. And since monotony can do a lot of damage to the gameplay I decided to add the option to let the AI do the construction and or upgrades for your regions. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/03/20/implementing-the-ingame-tutorial/ Wed, 20 Mar 2013 18:02:23 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/03/20/implementing-the-ingame-tutorial/ Now that the open beta of “Phase 2” has been downloaded a few times (with a 10:1 ratio between Windows and Linux) it seems that people like it. But one thing I’ve heard several times now was the lack of a tutorial. Since the game is pretty complex, especially compared to the current games, many people are finding it hard to get into the gameplay and actually win a game (I guess it’s the same thing I felt when I played my first matches of “Panzer General” almost 20 years ago). https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/03/04/redoing-backdrops-and-tuning-globe-shaders/ Mon, 04 Mar 2013 20:57:49 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/03/04/redoing-backdrops-and-tuning-globe-shaders/ The backdrops of the different nations have always annoyed me since I started to work on a 16:9 (and currently 16:10) widescreen display. When I created them way back for “Phase 1”, I made them with Corel’s Bryce (a pretty old version) and rendered them for 4:3 and 5:4 displays. And I always wanted to redo them since starting to work on “Phase 2”, which has been some time now, but never actually got around this and never had a clue what to do. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/02/15/projekt-w-phase-2-first-linux-release/ Fri, 15 Feb 2013 20:57:55 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/02/15/projekt-w-phase-2-first-linux-release/ Believe it or not, but after a month of hard work (and only very little sleep), the first open beta release of “Phase 2” for linux (i386) is finally here! Only a few small issues had to be fixed since my last posting about going multi-platform. No big deal, only a few visual glitches, missing staff images and (very annoying) a missing flood fill algorithm. I use flood fill to generate the colored territorial maps on each turn, and lazarus doesn’t implement this for the linux widget sets, so I had to write one on my own that isn’t slow as hell. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/02/09/going-multi-platform-part-5-finishing-touches/ Sat, 09 Feb 2013 17:23:06 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/02/09/going-multi-platform-part-5-finishing-touches/ After weeks of hard work and learning a lot about the differences between coding on windows and linux, the current source revision of Phase 2 is completly functional on linux and playing the same as a windows version. So if you’d put them side-by-side in fullscreen mode you wouldn’t notice any differences! Currently I’m putting the finishing toches on the linux release and only a very few minor things have to be fixed and adjusted before I’ll release the linux version into the wild, so you guys can play with it and provide me with feedback, the linux world is far more fractured than the windows world, so I’d love to know how the game runs on different distributions. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/02/03/going-multi-platform-part-4-first-run-on-a-native-linux/ Sun, 03 Feb 2013 16:44:35 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/02/03/going-multi-platform-part-4-first-run-on-a-native-linux/ After another week of intense coding on “Phase 2”, trying to fix the mistake I made with nativeXML, I finally got all of the xml stuff switched over to my own xmlwrapper. As hinted at in my last posting, nativeXML wasn’t working on linux (and I haven’t been unlocked for their support forums, after over a week of wait!) so I decided to write my own wrapper unit that uses fpc’s or delphi’s xml implementation, depending on the compiler target. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/01/28/going-multi-platform-part-3-first-throwback/ Mon, 28 Jan 2013 21:15:59 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/01/28/going-multi-platform-part-3-first-throwback/ Last weekend I worked on getting the lazarus / free pascal build of “Phase 2” to look and play exactly the same as the delphi build. I had to change some small things here and there, but after a few hours you can now no longer distinguish between the two builds, maybe except for performance. It looks that some stuff that’s pretty fast with delphi is kinda slow with fpc, for example accessing stringlists and stuff. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/01/21/going-multi-platform-part-2-first-compile-and-run/ Mon, 21 Jan 2013 12:25:01 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/01/21/going-multi-platform-part-2-first-compile-and-run/ I’ve been working to get the current code of “Phase 2” to compile and work under linux for the whole last weekend (and my eyes kinda hurt, again sitting in front of a monitor ;)). And things went much faster than I expected, so I was able to compile and run the game under linux for the very first time ever! First step was to add code for all things that are specific to an operating system. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/01/18/going-multi-platform-part-1-the-setup/ Fri, 18 Jan 2013 20:00:52 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/01/18/going-multi-platform-part-1-the-setup/ As mentioned in my agenda for 2013 (and in several older posts), I’ve been wanting to release “Phase 2” of Projekt W on more platforms than just windows. Especially in the developer community linux has a big fan base, and the bigger the audience for the game, the better. So shortly after the last post I updated my lazarus installation to the latest one (along with a current FPC compiler) and started to make the code compile with it. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/01/12/agenda-for-2013/ Sat, 12 Jan 2013 11:40:10 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2013/01/12/agenda-for-2013/ And so 2013 is here and it’s a good idea to update you on my agenda for this new year. My primary target for 2013 will be the release of a final “Phase 2” version of Projekt “W”. And with a public beta available that’s pretty close to the final product I’m pretty confident that this will finally happen this year. People seem to be mostly positive about the current public beta release (or at least I haven’t heard any negative comments) and all comments up until now have been pretty nice, something I’ve been missing before the release of a public beta. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/12/25/2012-final-posting-and-a-new-release/ Tue, 25 Dec 2012 14:14:06 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/12/25/2012-final-posting-and-a-new-release/ We’re in the final days of 2012 (and the world didn’t end, who would’ve thought) and continuing my “tradition” this will be the final post of this year including different topics. So first of all I’d like to wish all my friends, relatives and readers a good start into 2013! As for my personal situation, a lot changed in 2012 (if you’ve read last years final posting you might remember) and mostly for the positive. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/12/08/new-projekt-w-phase-2-beta-release-121/ Sat, 08 Dec 2012 10:52:12 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/12/08/new-projekt-w-phase-2-beta-release-121/ I have updated the “Phase 2” beta to release #121. This is dubbed the “AI update”, as it adds a lot of functionality and tweaks to the (enemy) AI of the game. When releasing the first “Phase 2” beta, it’s AI was pretty much at the same code level as the one for “Phase 1” and it actually didn’t do a lot of the new stuff that the gameplay offered. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/11/04/updating-the-ai/ Sun, 04 Nov 2012 09:02:35 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/11/04/updating-the-ai/ Now that the beta is out in the wild (and up until now I haven’t heard any big complaints) it’s time to finally bring the AI in line with all the changes in “Phase 2”. In the last beta, roughly 90% of the AI code was the same as in “Phase 1” and so the current AI isn’t much of a challenge. So I just started rewriting most of the AI code for the next beta, and one of the areas the AI was always lacking (already in “Phase 1”) was building construction. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/10/21/projekt-w-first-public-phase-2-beta/ Sun, 21 Oct 2012 14:24:28 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/10/21/projekt-w-first-public-phase-2-beta/ More than five years after the release of “Phase 1”, the first public beta for “Phase 2” goes live! I’ve been working on “Phase 2” almost every single day for the past five years, and a lot of coding, creativ work and though went into this game. And though at some times it looked like I’d never get it done I finally got to a point where the game is in such a good shape that I can release a beta to the public, so everyone being curious can take a look at the game’s current shape and how much it evolved compared to “Phase 1”. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/10/13/finishing-the-the-first-public-beta/ Sat, 13 Oct 2012 17:41:19 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/10/13/finishing-the-the-first-public-beta/ Believe it or not, but after posting about “Phase 2” for over five years now I’m putting the finishing touches on a soon-to-be-released beta of the game! Actually I already realeased a beta over at a german forum to see how it works with other people’s hardware configurations, but since that version was missing a lot of english translations and was missing some stuff that I wanted to finish off before going public, the “international” release of the first “Phase 2” beta will take a little bit more time. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/09/30/from-phase-1-to-phase-2/ Sun, 30 Sep 2012 18:00:43 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/09/30/from-phase-1-to-phase-2/ From time to time I sit down and play through a game of “Phase 2” after doing some coding on it, just to get a feeling on the game’s progress and user interface. And sometimes I also fire up “Phase 1” to see how much has changed and how much new content has made it’s way into the game. And recently I was curious on what has actually changed behind the scenes, i. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/08/04/phase-2-jungle-warfare/ Sat, 04 Aug 2012 19:42:46 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/08/04/phase-2-jungle-warfare/ Some live footage from the battleground : Somehow I could hardly resist not to call this post “Welcome to the jungle”, cause that’s exactly what I thought when playing around on the game’s manual battlefield in the “jungle”-setting. I did a lot of postings about the new manual battles for “Phase 2”, and in several of those I mentioned that there is a lot of content that needs to be created for the different settings of the battlefield. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/07/28/phase-2-satus-update-july-2012/ Sat, 28 Jul 2012 19:00:11 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/07/28/phase-2-satus-update-july-2012/ Well, another month passed by quickly, but I don’t want to let a month pass without a single post, so here is another states update on progress for “Phase 2”, and again with screenshots first (this time in 1920x1200 resolution with 4xAA) : The first shot shows the overhauled intro for “Phase 2”. Redoing the intro has been on my todo-list from the very beginning, as the “intro” for “Phase 1” wasn’t pretty anyway. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/06/24/phase-2-status-update-june-2012/ Sun, 24 Jun 2012 10:48:08 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/06/24/phase-2-status-update-june-2012/ With the last post about “Phase 2” now almost two months old it’s time for another status update, and no status update without current screenshots : “Phase 2” is progressing nice. Not at the speed of light, but it’s going forward on a steady pace and now most of the open issues that made it unplayable have been fixed and several new features were also added. So the current build is pretty close to something I can release! https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/05/04/projekt-w-phase-2-new-screenshots/ Fri, 04 May 2012 20:03:49 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/05/04/projekt-w-phase-2-new-screenshots/ As usual, time flies by and my last update has been roughly a month ago, but no, I haven’t been lazy, and so here are a few new screenshots from the current development version of “Phase 2” (thumbs, click for larger view) : As you can see, the game is looking more and more finished with each new batch of screenshots. One thing you might notice is that I switched over to a different font compared to the older screenshots / videos. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/04/09/phase-2-quick-status-report/ Mon, 09 Apr 2012 16:17:22 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/04/09/phase-2-quick-status-report/ Well, the last few months have been pretty rough as hinted at in my last posting for 2011, but slowly things start to settle, and though having a new job means not much time for hobbies anymore (8 hours a day plus driving to and from work won’t leave much sparetime, though working atmosphere is pretty fine) I recently started to continue work on “Phase 2”, and I guess that’s a good sign after all. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2011/12/23/2011-final-posting/ Fri, 23 Dec 2011 14:58:37 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2011/12/23/2011-final-posting/ So here we are again, another year is coming to an end and though 2011 wasn’t a very good year, it’s ending even worse than I could’ve imagined. A recent (14th december) personal loss of a very close relative (don’t ask for details, the internet is not the right place to discuss personal stuff) has caused a drastic change to my personal situation. It’s not that I wasn’t prepared for it, but still this was pretty much unexpected and the timing of this event is alos pretty bad with the year ending and a lot of stuff left to do. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/11/10/projekt-w-on-current-ct-magazine-issue/ Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:27:29 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/11/10/projekt-w-on-current-ct-magazine-issue/ Upon opening my letterbox (yes, the real one) this morning I found a free copy of the current issue of the german c’t computer magazine. Why I got this one for free? Because it features the last release of Projekt “W” (Phase 1, v1.2). Back in september I got a mail from the editorial staff of the c’t magazine telling me that Projekt “W” (which is listed on their online download portal) made it into the preselection for the next c’t’ software collection to be featured in one of their future issues. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/07/08/phase-2-running-on-linux-using-wine/ Thu, 08 Jul 2010 15:52:27 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/07/08/phase-2-running-on-linux-using-wine/ After releasing “Phase 1” (which was actually quite some long time ago) several people were asking for Linux support, but actually I wasn’t keen of having to port the game over to Linux (and I haven’t changed on that since then), so there never was (and never will be) a port for Linux. And as it seems it was also not possible to get the game running using WINE due to the fact that it used GDI+ for doing several imaging related things. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/05/05/the-old-gui-is-history/ Wed, 05 May 2010 20:18:31 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/05/05/the-old-gui-is-history/ Yes, you read that right. In a “shocking” turn of events I decided to scrap almost the whole old GUI for “Phase 2” in favour of a new and better one. Most of you might now ask if I went insane or so, but to counter this I’ll elaborate on why I scrapped the old GUI and decided to put a new one in : When I’m not in front of my PC and working on “Phase 2” (that’s actually the only thing I’m doing in front of the PC nowadays, no more gaming or such, spare time is rare for me) I always have pen and paper in close range so I can put down and work on new ideas anytime they hit me. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/04/13/some-words-about-phase-2/ Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:16:49 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/04/13/some-words-about-phase-2/ My first posting on “Phase 2” for Projekt “W” in three months does not mean that I haven’t been working on it. Actually although my spare time is very limited (it gets worse and worse almost every month) I still try to squeeze out some spare time each day to do at least minor things related to “Phase 2”. And since event small steps sum up I got several things done towards a first release of “Phase 2” and so I decided to upload some screenshots and talk about what I’ve been doing. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/01/14/new-staff-/-transfer-market-window-and-more-on-staff-experience/ Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:26:57 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/01/14/new-staff-/-transfer-market-window-and-more-on-staff-experience/ After a long time without updates on “Phase 2” of Projekt “W” (due to the fact that I just haven’t had time to work on it), I got around doing some work on it in the recent days and** finished the overhaul of the staff / transfer market window**. As mentioned in my recent postings on “Phase 2”, all the windows will be revamped to make them look more like they’re in a game rather than in some kind of office application for windows. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2009/10/14/status-update-on-phase-2/ Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:21:30 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2009/10/14/status-update-on-phase-2/ After taking a longer break from coding (it’s been almost four months since my last update on “Phase 2”) I returned to coding last week. Followers of my work might already know that I sometimes take longer pauses from development, mostly when either my motivation or my inspiration is gone, and as for this longer break it was connected to both. After implementing the nuke shown on my last update I actually wanted to start full work on the global projects, but without inspiration for what projects to do and how to implement them into the sourcecode I decided to take a break. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2009/05/12/progress-on-phase-2-new-spy-type/ Tue, 12 May 2009 19:47:33 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2009/05/12/progress-on-phase-2-new-spy-type/ With the last update already more than two months old I thought it was time to tell the outside world about the progress on “Phase 2” of Projekt “W”. And although I’m still not able to put as much time into “Phase 2” as I’d like to (and not nearly as much as I was able to do back when working on “Phase 1”) it’s still progressing. Almost all time I could put into working on “Phase 2” since the last update went into the espionage rework and this part of the game is shaping up very well. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2009/02/10/gui-gui-editor-and-espionage-along-with-some-sabotage/ Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:10:55 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2009/02/10/gui-gui-editor-and-espionage-along-with-some-sabotage/ So in the last update from January I promises you some more information on the progress of “Phase 2” for Projekt “W” along with some screenshots, and today I’m gonna keep this promise! Although I’m still not having as much time for coding (and working) on “Phase 2” as I’d like to have I still manged to do a lot of stuff during the last days and weeks towards the road to “Phase 2”. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2009/01/13/quick-update/ Tue, 13 Jan 2009 19:43:47 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2009/01/13/quick-update/ Since my last news posting already started to collect dust I thought it would be time for a small update. Sadly I don’t have any screenshots to show or any groundbreaking news, but I can assure that I still work on “Phase 2” of Projekt “W”. Right now I’m** implementing a redesign of the whole espionage and sabotage part** of the game, as the initial draft from “Phase 1” lacks a lot and I want to make espionage (and sabotage) much more important for “Phase 2”. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/07/27/promised-mediaupdate/ Sun, 27 Jul 2008 19:32:42 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/07/27/promised-mediaupdate/ A week too late, but better now than never. So here is the promised update on the progress of “Phase 2”. A lot of stuff has happened (not everything will be visible to the player) so this post will be a bit longer than usual. Let’s start off with the global projects. As already mentioned several times, these are one (if not the) biggest addition to “Phase 2” and will change gameplay a lot. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/07/12/big-performance-jump-for-phase-2/ Sat, 12 Jul 2008 17:24:16 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/07/12/big-performance-jump-for-phase-2/ While working on different parts of the source for “Phase 2” I also took a look at the rendering method for the 3D models and decided to totally rewrite those functions. They now (together with other changes) render models sorted by materials, which gives a huge performance improvements (texture changes are very expensive, and rendering sorted by materials removes a lot of them) that will be included with “Phase 2”.