https://www.saschawillems.de/tags/projekt-w/ Recent content in projekt-w 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/2012/11/17/using-generics-in-delphi/ Sat, 17 Nov 2012 12:03:07 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/11/17/using-generics-in-delphi/ When it comes to “new” language features in Delphi (which usually have been in Free Pascal for years) I’m always willing to give them a shot. I’m using the for..in loop a lot, and also tend to shorten my code with things like ifthen (the poor mans ? operator, but sadly without any compiler magic). And I also use the with statment a lot, though it doesn’t have the best reputation amongst Delphi coders due to it’s scope problems. 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/2012/09/07/weekend-posting/ Fri, 07 Sep 2012 15:36:50 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/09/07/weekend-posting/ It’s weekend and my last posting was almost a month ago, but don’t worry, I’m not idle at all. As for “Phase 2” of Projekt “W”, I finally got around writing the manual to it, and while doing so I noticed that it’s actually pretty hard to write a manual for such a complex game. And even worse if it’s your own game, as it’s extremly hard to write a manual that can be used to learn the game by someone that has never played it. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/08/14/battlefield-terrains-and-some-technical-stuff/ Tue, 14 Aug 2012 17:13:04 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2012/08/14/battlefield-terrains-and-some-technical-stuff/ As you might have noticed from pretty much all battlefield-related screenshots I’ve posted over the last months (or even years), the battlefield was always surrounded by water (and earlier on by some kind of bowl), and I was never really happy with it. Especially when fighting in a desert scenario, surrounding it with water looked pretty odd, and adding a sandshader didn’t make things any better. But just having the battlefield floating in the air didn’t look good either, so I recently sat down and finally decided to add real 3D terrain surrounding the battlefields, with different terrains depending on the setting you’re fighting in. 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/2011/11/10/phase-2-november-work-in-progress-video/ Thu, 10 Nov 2011 16:16:33 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2011/11/10/phase-2-november-work-in-progress-video/ I’ve just uploaded a new work-in-progress video from my current version of Projekt “W” - Phase 2. It’s been some time since my last posting on “Phase 2”, and though I didn’t have that much time to work on it I still got a lot of stuff done, and what’s better than showing screenshots of that new stuff? Correct, showing an HD video of it : As you can see I (once again) redid the whole user interface. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2011/08/01/color-selection-fbos-and-traditional-render-to-texture/ Mon, 01 Aug 2011 18:32:20 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2011/08/01/color-selection-fbos-and-traditional-render-to-texture/ In what happens to be a rarity nowadays you’ll now get exactly what you could guess from the caption of this posting. I’ve been working on those three things yesterday and today and thought I might share some of my experience implementing color selection the right way into a complex user interface. Those of you that coding apps/games/whatever using OpenGL might know that the old selection functionality of OpenGL (which wasn’t that bad at all) is a no-go nowadays, mainly due to the fact that it’s done in software for some time now by all big graphics cards vendors and therefore sadly disqualifies it for a realtime usage. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2011/04/20/phase-2-eyecandy/ Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:33:46 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2011/04/20/phase-2-eyecandy/ Don’t worry, I’ve been doing some gameplay related stuff too (including a revamp of global project functionality, coastal building spots for regions), but somehow I had the urge to spice up the game’s main view a bit and decided to implement a nice atmosphere for the globe. Something I wanted to do for a long time but somehow never got around. Another thing you can see in the video below is the new water shaders. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/12/28/2010-final-posting/ Tue, 28 Dec 2010 12:30:30 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/12/28/2010-final-posting/ Welcome to my last posting of 2010! I haven’t been doing regular yearly recaps on my blog since launching it like 5 years ago (time flies by, eh?), but I think it’s a good idea to do a little recap on what happened in 2010 and on what I plan to get done in 2011. Please note that this posting may contain some personal notes and/or ramblings of mine! 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/2010/10/28/phase-2-status-update/ Thu, 28 Oct 2010 16:48:27 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/10/28/phase-2-status-update/ As promised some (long) time ago (but better late than never) here is a new status update on the progress for “Phase 2” of Projekt “W”. Although my spare time is getting more and more limited due to some real important real life things that I have to take care of I still somehow manage to make progress on what now seems like my personal swansong, and actually a lot of things happened since my last status update, so this one is getting a bit longer this time. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/07/20/new-user-interface-in-motion/ Tue, 20 Jul 2010 18:08:34 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/07/20/new-user-interface-in-motion/ As promised some weeks ago I finally got around capturing a video of the totally new user interface that I decided to put into “Phase 2”. As mentioned earlier it’s not only a visual “upgrade”, making the UI more sleek and futuristic but also adds a lot of information to the default view and also brings in lot more usability. As you can see in the video most parts are already done, though there is still some work to be done before I can call it finished. 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/2010/07/05/quick-interception/ Mon, 05 Jul 2010 08:22:24 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2010/07/05/quick-interception/ Time flies by, and so the last posting is already collecting dust. As usual I’m not getting much time to work on “Phase 2”, but I’m making steady (though little) progress on an (almost daily) base. So the new user interface I’ve been talking about in my last posting is in (with a few minor things to be done and sorted) and it looks stunning, adding a lot to the game, both in terms of visual style and usability. 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/2009/06/22/prototyping-nukes-including-hd-video-updated/ Mon, 22 Jun 2009 21:33:27 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2009/06/22/prototyping-nukes-including-hd-video-updated/ Update : Some people complained that the explosion didn’t look realistic, and after watching videos of real nukes I guessed they we’re right. So I revamped the explosion to make it look more realistic in itself, as well as adding several effects like a screen blind and shaking. So enjoy the new video below, it’s much better than the old one! After releasing my explosion texture generator, I guess it’s now time to show you what I’ve been using it’s textures for. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2009/05/30/phase-2-work-in-progress-video-hd-and-youtube-channel/ Sat, 30 May 2009 17:59:34 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2009/05/30/phase-2-work-in-progress-video-hd-and-youtube-channel/ Up until now everything you’ve seen from “Phase 2” have been some static screenshots. So I thought it would be a good idea to create a quick in-game video showing some of the new features, along with some of the stuff I changed over the past few days and weeks. As you can see on the video I also redid some of the old windows, like the one for army management in order to make them look nicer, but also to make them easier to use. 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/2009/03/02/projekt-w-releasing-betas/ Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:40:58 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2009/03/02/projekt-w-releasing-betas/ As you may know from my recent postings I don’t get much time to work on “Phase 2”. It’s progressing, a lot of stuff is already in, some of the new features are finished, some others are still being worked on and other new features right now only exist on paper. So judging by my current progress since “Phase 1” it’s still a lot of time to pass before “Phase 2” will be released, but reading comments and mails I think a lot of people are interested in seeing more of “Phase 2” than just the screenshots I post from time to time. 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”. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/07/09/quick-check-in/ Wed, 09 Jul 2008 13:47:27 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/07/09/quick-check-in/ Just a quick note to let you know that there will be bigger media update sometime next week. Sadly I’m not having as much time for coding as I’d like to have, but I’m still trying to work on “Phase 2” every minute I can spare, so there have been a lot of smaller and some bigger changes/additions towards the road to “Phase 2”. Right now I started implementing the “global Projects”, mighty projects that need a lot of effort and ressources to finish, but that can, if used right, change the whole game. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/06/11/hex-battles-evolved/ Wed, 11 Jun 2008 22:46:27 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/06/11/hex-battles-evolved/ While working on the remaining settings for the battlefields in “Phase 2” (in total, there will be eight different settings, including snow, deserts, lush and dry scenarios and so on) I felt that the look of the hex battles didn’t match the rest of the games visuals. They were too flat, no shadows and nothing surrounding them except the skybox. It just felt bland and urged me to change something about it, and I did. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/05/30/100k-visitors-and-some-projekt-w/ Fri, 30 May 2008 15:33:37 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/05/30/100k-visitors-and-some-projekt-w/ Since relaunching my page with Wordpress back in march 2007, there have been over 100,000 visitors to my page. Although this does not sound much at first, I guess it’s pretty good for a personal page (together with the fact that there were roughly 75,000 visitors to my page before that relaunch) and I hope that all those visitors enjoyed my projects, demos, applications and tutorials. And for those interested in numbers, I just saw that the** traffic generated by my page for the first five months of 2008** (including views and downloads) has topped 1. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/05/26/new-feature-for-phase-2/ Mon, 26 May 2008 18:32:48 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/05/26/new-feature-for-phase-2/ While doing some miscellaneous coding and design-related stuff for “Phase 2” of Project “W”, I had a sudden inspiration for a new feature in order to get more dynamics into the gameplay. The new feature I therefore implemented is a stock market. Nothing revolutionary (I guess most games similar to Project “W” have that feature too) but it’s bringing much more dynamics into the game’s flow. In “Phase 1”, you can only make resources with the regions themselves, but the new stock market will allow you to make a lot of resources (or loose a lot) within a short amount of time, but with a lot of risk. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/05/16/resuming-work-on-phase-2-of-projekt-w/ Fri, 16 May 2008 21:18:50 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/05/16/resuming-work-on-phase-2-of-projekt-w/ The last news concerning “Phase 2” of Projekt “W” dates back to february, but I recently decided to resume work on “Phase 2” again (after playing a lot of Guild Wars in a new guild) and over the last couple of days I finished a new part of the GUI that you’ll see when you attack a region. If you’ve followed my postings on “Phase 2” you should know that the player will be able to either simulate the battles or to fight it out himself on a turn-based hex battlefield. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/02/03/impressions-from-the-battlefield/ Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:45:47 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/02/03/impressions-from-the-battlefield/ Amongst other stuff, I’ve benn mostly working on the different battlefield settings for the turn-based battles that’ll come with “Phase 2”. As of now I plan to have eight different settings (ranging from desert, to snowy, to lush and so on), and each setting also having different maps. This should bring in enough variety into the turn-base battles to make them fun to play. Here are some in-game impressions from the settings I started working on (note that they’re all still work-in-progess, especially the 3D models like trees and buoldings) : https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/01/08/skinning-of-military-units-finished/ Tue, 08 Jan 2008 00:03:23 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2008/01/08/skinning-of-military-units-finished/ The title says it all. During the last few days I created all skins for the existing cast of military units and made the 3D models ready to use them, which means changing some parts of the model itself (most models now also have a lower poly-count, which is good for the turn-based battles) and unwrapping the texture-coordinates (a lot of work, it’s not easy, especially not for the more complex models). https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/12/23/first-new-skinned-military-unit/ Sun, 23 Dec 2007 20:52:29 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/12/23/first-new-skinned-military-unit/ In “Phase 1”, all military units have the same look across all nations. This is something I actually never wanted, but had to do due to time restrictions. This will be history with “Phase 2”, as (in addition to the new unique units for all nations) all military units will have different skins for each nation. Those of you that at some point did UV-mapping of a 3D-unit know that it’s not easy to create a half-way good looking skin, especially if you haven’t much experience in this field. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/12/10/projekt-w-roadmap-for-phase-2/ Mon, 10 Dec 2007 17:58:20 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/12/10/projekt-w-roadmap-for-phase-2/ On a quick note, I have uploaded a roadmap for “Phase 2”, you can take a look at it here. It lists all tasks that are still open, and the tasks I already finished. I’ll update it over time so you can see progress on “Phase 2”. Also please note that some stuff I’ve been talking about for “Phase 2” isn’t on that list yet, but it may be added later on. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/12/02/more-on-the-manual-hex-battles/ Sun, 02 Dec 2007 17:34:46 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/12/02/more-on-the-manual-hex-battles/ Besides other smaller things I finally implemented the A* search algorithm for the manual hex battles, which was the most important part to get the AI working. So if you battle an enemy controlled region now, the computer enemy will be able to find it’s way across the battlfield and around any obstacles towards your units. Next step is now to tweak the battle calculations, something a lot of people weren’t satisfied with. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/11/17/2000-downloads-and-more-on-phase-2/ Sat, 17 Nov 2007 21:14:15 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/11/17/2000-downloads-and-more-on-phase-2/ Since it’s release on august 14th, “Phase 1” of Projekt W has been downloaded over 2000 times. Considering that turn-based games are a niche nowadays, with only a few exceptions (like the Civilization series) I’m pretty happy with the number of downloads. But what makes me even happier is the feedback I’ve gotten from those that played the game. With my recent projects, feedback was very rare, with the exception of my regular forums I also posted about my projects, but with Projekt W that changed. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/10/21/different-ui-themes/ Sun, 21 Oct 2007 20:47:07 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/10/21/different-ui-themes/ In “Phase 1” all nations shared the same theme for the user interface, something I initially didn’t want to do but I postponed that features to “Phase 2” and just started working on this. So in the next version of Projekt “W” every nation will have it’s own distinctive theme for the user-interface, an additional way to distinguish between the different nations. So with “Phase 2” you’ll have a different 3d-background, a different sky and a different user-interface for the nation you choose, and in addition to that I also plan on having different skins for military units depending on their owning nation. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/10/15/projekt-w-battles-and-some-newton-tidbits/ Mon, 15 Oct 2007 21:02:26 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/10/15/projekt-w-battles-and-some-newton-tidbits/ Recently I’ve started working on the new turn-based battles that’ll come with “Phase 2” of Projekt “W”. If you have played the game, you already saw the automatic battles with no possibility for the player to intervene. This will be changed, and you’ll have full control over attacking and defending regions. If a battle starts, the game will switch into the turn-based battle-mode where you firt place your units and then move them turn-by-turn (player after player) until one of the parties has been terminated. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/10/09/aftermath/ Tue, 09 Oct 2007 15:06:07 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/10/09/aftermath/ As Projekt “W” (Phase 1) has been out for some weeks now, it’s time for a small recap. With the latest version (1.2) most of the bugs and problems of the first versions have gone, and after watching the feedback (mostly on forums) it seems that people like it. Some even compared it to commercial games and prefer Projekt “W”, and that’s great to know. There also has been plenty of useful feedback, mostly on balancing, that I’ll try to incorporate into Phase 2. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/09/05/projekt-w-patch-1.2/ Wed, 05 Sep 2007 20:11:50 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/09/05/projekt-w-patch-1.2/ Although it took much more time than I expected, Patch 1.2 is done and released! After implementing the tutorial I already wanted to release it (last weekend) but I noticed that there wer a lot of bugs and problems buried within the AI and the army management. Some of them were serious and did hurt the whole gameplay experience, so I decided to push back the patch and fix all those issues. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/08/28/patch-1.2-coming-soon-including-tutorial/ Tue, 28 Aug 2007 22:21:07 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/08/28/patch-1.2-coming-soon-including-tutorial/ Right now I’m working on the next patch, version 1.2 for Projekt “W”. This patch will mostly contain changes, especially to the user interface that make the game “faster” too navigate. A lot of actions will also be triggered by double-clicking items or by pressing keys, instead of having to select stuff and to click on a different button. That should make the gameplay experience more smooth. The patch will also add some more information, for example a new window will now pop up if you have finished research, instead of just adding an easy-to-overlook newsitem. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/08/18/projekt-w-patch-1.1-update-1.11/ Sat, 18 Aug 2007 16:51:12 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/08/18/projekt-w-patch-1.1-update-1.11/ Important note : There has been one bug left in 1.1 that would throw an exception when you tried to attack a region that has an empty divison assigned. This is an important issue but only needs an updated exe, so I quickly uploaded a zip that includes the game’s .exe that you just need to replace. Note that I also updated the full installer to 1.11! Win32 Installer for Projekt “W” - Phase 1 - Version 1. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/08/15/projekt-w-phase-1-hotfix-1.01/ Wed, 15 Aug 2007 12:11:57 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/08/15/projekt-w-phase-1-hotfix-1.01/ As usual I screwed up the release atleast partially. Besides crashing with resolutions of aspect ratio 5:4 (e.g. 1280x1024) I also forgot to include the music files for winning and loosing the game, so if you did and had music enabled it would crash. So I reuploaded the game with these fixes. I would have provided a patch but that would take it’s time so if you encounter any of the above problems please redownload it (direct download link). https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/08/14/projekt-w-phase-1-release/ Tue, 14 Aug 2007 17:27:16 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/08/14/projekt-w-phase-1-release/  After a year of work it's time to celebrate the release of the most complex and ambitious of my programming career! **Project "W" - Phase 1 is finally here and free for you to download and play!** Head over to the game’s new page and grab a copy of the game (Windows 32, Installer, ~30 MBytes, includes german and english). The page also includes a lot of information on the game itself as well as a bunch of new screenshots, so while downloading it you can read through the page and browse the shots. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/07/27/working-towards-release-and-littel-name-change/ Fri, 27 Jul 2007 16:08:09 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/07/27/working-towards-release-and-littel-name-change/ The closer you get towards releasing your game the more small things surface that have to be taken care off before going public, and so over the last days/weeks I have been busy mostly taking care of small bugs and annoyances that needed fixing. Actually I already could have released it but everyone of you working on a game/application knows the feeling when you’re close to release. On the one hand you want to release it (in order to take the weight off your shoulders) but on the other hand you want to release something that’s as smooth and polished as possible. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/07/04/artificial-intelligence/ Wed, 04 Jul 2007 17:01:25 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/07/04/artificial-intelligence/ Some postings ago I already told you that the AI for Project “W” is the first more complex AI that I did (and still do) so I’m gonna post a bit about it this time. My initial goal was to create an artificial intelligence that’s giving the player a challenge without cheating but that’s also behaving different from game-to-game. The first point is pretty clear, if an AI is cheating the player will start to notice it after some matches and it makes the player feel betrayed, which is a real no-go. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/06/21/good-news-for-owners-of-old-graphics-cards-and-more-on-ai/ Thu, 21 Jun 2007 20:00:57 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/06/21/good-news-for-owners-of-old-graphics-cards-and-more-on-ai/ As some people over at a forum I’m active in noted that they wouldn’t be able to play Projekt “W” cause their graphics cards don’t support shaders, I decided to spent some time on implementing a renderpath that works without shaders. Especially the globe uses a more complex shader and recreating something at least similar with the fixed function pipeline wasn’t that easy but in the end I got something that works on old cards and still looks good enough. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/06/14/manual-and-soundsystem/ Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:24:57 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/06/14/manual-and-soundsystem/ As the project is already close to finish I started to write the manual several days ago and just finished the english one (the game will include german and english languages, so a german manual will also be included) and it’s roughly 15 pages long. And as this game is a bit more complex than most of my other games it’s really recommended to read this cause otherwise out would be hard to play. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/06/05/more-playtesting-balancing-bughunting-and-ai/ Tue, 05 Jun 2007 14:23:53 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/06/05/more-playtesting-balancing-bughunting-and-ai/ The title exactly sums up what I’ve been doing on Projekt “W” the last couple of days. After an extensive round of playtesting I squashed the last few remaining bugs and problems I encountered and was finally able to play a whole game without any troubles, crashes or other things that disturbed a smooth gameplay experience. It took me around 90 turns to finish a whole game, playing the oceanic front. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/05/24/transfer-market-new-cursors-texture-compression-and-more/ Thu, 24 May 2007 12:48:56 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/05/24/transfer-market-new-cursors-texture-compression-and-more/ Since the last update on Project “W” I worked on a lot of smaller things and also did a lot of work on the “background” of the game (the stuff most players won’t notice but which is still important to work on), so this news posting will be a collection of all the things I did over the last days. Transfer market : This was actually the last thing that was really bugging me as up until recently each staff member would have the same image with only name and values being different, so I started to take care of this and in the final version there will be around a dozen of different faces for each of the professions (scienists, spies and generals) so the staff you hire is much more personalized and can easily be recognized. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/05/17/first-playtesting-sessions-and-hardware-requirements/ Thu, 17 May 2007 18:32:08 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/05/17/first-playtesting-sessions-and-hardware-requirements/ Although there are still some minor things to do before I can call it a version that’s ready to getting released, Projekt “W” is now in a shape where you can actually play a whole game without it throwing an exception (so far all show-stoppers have been fixed). So today I made the first two playtesting session with the first one being interrupted with a bug that I quicly fixed followed by a second playtesting session. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/05/12/on-the-state-of-project-w/ Sat, 12 May 2007 18:58:57 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/05/12/on-the-state-of-project-w/ I just crossed the last remaining things off from my todo-list for the demo (except for one point which is finishing one of the remaining nation backgrounds) and so far I have been very pleased with it’s progress since I started on the new version back in august 2006 (I still have a backup from that date on my disk in order to quickly check progress). Recently a friend of mine came by and after showing him the current in-developement version he was stunned by the professional looks of it so I guess it’s going in the right direction and all the work I’ve put into it in the end will pay out. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/05/04/hotseat-mode-is-in/ Fri, 04 May 2007 19:34:41 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/05/04/hotseat-mode-is-in/ As already hinted at in my last posting on the subject of Project “W” I implemented the hotseat-multiplayer-mode, which will be the only multiplayer-mode present in the demo. For those that don’t know about it, hotseat is a multiplayer-mode that only uses one PC and therefore only can be used in a turn-based game (like Project “W”). So before starting such a game (see first screenshot) you choose what nation is controlled by a human player (other nations are played by the computer, disabling a whole nation is not possible but maybe later on with different game modes) and you can also set the number of ressources each nation has at the start of the game. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/04/24/endgame-screens-and-top-five/ Tue, 24 Apr 2007 13:08:09 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/04/24/endgame-screens-and-top-five/ Although I haven’t had that much time to work on Project “W” since my last entry here I actually did get some more points on my todo-list done. As you can see on the screenshot to your left there is now a nice looking game-ending screen which will show some statistics as well as a top-five of the best players. For the screen itself I needed half-a-dozen attempts until I had gotten something finished that looked the way I imagined and had enough space to present all needed information, and as some kind of gift I also decided to add this small highscore-list so that there now is another additional value in replaying the game. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/04/09/cast-of-buildings/ Mon, 09 Apr 2007 19:53:16 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/04/09/cast-of-buildings/ High on 1the heels of my last posting about the cast of the military units for the Project"W" demo, I now also have finished all buildings that will be present in the demo. The number is 39 and even though I didn’t stop the time while creating them I can safely say that it took me far over one hundred hours to design, model and texture them so this was actually the toughest part of the content creation sector for Project “W”. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/04/03/cast-of-military-units/ Tue, 03 Apr 2007 21:34:13 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/04/03/cast-of-military-units/ I just finished modelling and texturing the last military unit left to have the list of units for the demo finished. If you click on the image to your left you’ll get a picture of all the different units that will be in the demo. You can see 10 military units that can be build by the player (2 infantry units, 5 different tanks, a mechanoid walker, two airplanes) and one special purpose unit, the mobile environment changer. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/03/28/project-w-new-video/ Wed, 28 Mar 2007 20:33:12 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/03/28/project-w-new-video/ As promised several times I finally made a new video for Project “W” to showcase the project’s current progress. The video is fresh out of the press and I created it only several hours ago (actually I started two days ago but did several tries). It’s almost 7 minutes long and encoded in windows media format (WMV) so anyone having installed a recent version of the mediaplayer or having installed a codec pack should be able to watch it. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/03/17/next-stop-localization/ Sat, 17 Mar 2007 17:06:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/03/17/next-stop-localization/ Once again I finished some points on my todo-list for the demo release, including all missing icons (for buttons, windows, etc.), adding some rebel units (which you encounter while attacking a region that had separated itself from your government), finishing the regionmap (remaining names, adjusting values, etc.) and much more. But one of the biggest still outstanding points on the list is localization of the game. And this is exactly what I’m gonna do next. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/03/13/climbing-the-todo-ladder/ Tue, 13 Mar 2007 13:37:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/03/13/climbing-the-todo-ladder/ Since the last posting here on my blog I got a big share of the outstanding Todos for the coming demo done (around 50% of the points on the list), so work is still going at my projected speed and the game is looking and feeling better and better each day. And as I already hinted at in my last posting one of the things I did was the customization of the regional 3D view. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/03/04/even-more-work-on-the-gui/ Sun, 04 Mar 2007 19:40:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/03/04/even-more-work-on-the-gui/ Right now I’m working down the points on my todo-list towards the demo release and already got several things done. But one point was usability and look of the GUI for the game and this one took (and still takes) much longer than I initially had planned. I did a lot of work on the main menu, including an options screen and adding functionality to have every UI element slowly fade in and fade out. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/02/26/gui-flow/ Mon, 26 Feb 2007 13:35:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/02/26/gui-flow/ It’s been a while since the last update on Project “W”, but work is still going on though mostly on things you can’t show via some nice screenshots (and text-only postings aren’t that much fun either). I’m still on-time towards my predicted date for the first demo (early Q2/2007) and right now I think I can actually even finsh it until my self-set deadline. To achieve that I wrote down a list with all the things needed to be finished for a demo relase and that list isn’t very huge and mostly contains smaller things concerning polish of certain game features. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/02/15/more-national-identity/ Thu, 15 Feb 2007 17:11:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/02/15/more-national-identity/ First a sorry for such a long delay since the last posting but after having problems with my internet connection my modem also decided to die, so I haven’t had the chance to update this since the last posting. But now on to the work I did on Project “W”. Most work last days was spent on creating full 3D-backgrounds to strengthen the players identification with the nation he chooses to play. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/02/05/working-towards-the-finish/ Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:41:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/02/05/working-towards-the-finish/ In terms of coding I’m nowadays spending most of the time working on the smaller things within the game that maybe many players won’t notice, but will have a big impact on the final polish of the game.. Things like additional messages and hint when e.g. a nation is terminated and other important ingame events, tweaking the game’s usability (as I wrote in my initial game design I want to have all of the game’s functionality to be accessible with at most 2 clicks) and more newsmessages. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/01/30/more-content-and-a-vfs/ Tue, 30 Jan 2007 18:27:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/01/30/more-content-and-a-vfs/ Once again the past days have been very productive when it comes to Project “W” (although I’ve been a bit distracted by the recent Dawn of War Addon) both in terms of content for the game and in terms of coding. As for the content, I modeled some new buildings so that I currently have 26 of the ~32 buildings finished. I’ve put my priority on creating models for the buildings you can construct right after the start of the game, so the remaining models I have to do will be for some of the more futuristic buildings that you can only build after researching certain technologies. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/01/24/smaller-steps/ Wed, 24 Jan 2007 13:39:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/01/24/smaller-steps/ As usual when a project has advanced a lot, like Project “W” did, the steps you make get smaller and smaller. At first you implement the big features and see big changes within a few days of coding but that phase is over for some time now. And therefore I’m currently working on a lot of the smaller things that make the game more playable/enjoyable, and that includes a lot of small facets of game design. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/01/18/translation/ Thu, 18 Jan 2007 19:24:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/01/18/translation/ Another long outstanding thing that I was “succesfully” getting around the last months was translation of Project “W”. But this is history, as I sat down the last few days and implemented translation features into the game. At first I wanted to use the ITE of BDS2006, but somehow actually didn’t like it. So I implemented the whole translation stuff myself, and you can directly translate strings in the game’s main editor “WeltEdit”, which then are referenced through unique identifiers within the game. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/01/15/more-ai-balancing-and-research-tree/ Mon, 15 Jan 2007 17:53:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/01/15/more-ai-balancing-and-research-tree/ Though I didn’t spent too much time on Projekt “W” since the last posting I still got some stuff done. Firstly I went for the technology tree, which was (very much like the list of buildings) something that I pushed back and back during the whole developement. But since the list of buildings is closely tied to the technologytree I actually had to do this, and many technologies are mainly there to unlock new buildings. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/01/10/work-on-ai-started/ Wed, 10 Jan 2007 18:43:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/01/10/work-on-ai-started/ You read right, earlier than I expected I started to implement computer controlled enemies (aka “AI”) that’ll control all non-player regions. But before doing that step I did a lot on the code and made sure all features worked as expected and that there were no bugs left, so I can fully concentrate on the AI without having to fix problems or bugs at the same time. Luckily there wasn’t much to be done on that part, and except for one or two annoyances (e. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/01/06/raging-battles/ Sat, 06 Jan 2007 14:49:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2007/01/06/raging-battles/ Over the past days I implemented the last missing sub-feature of the military feature : attacking enemy regions. This was something I pushed back and forth all the time, cause before implementing it I had to be sure that the values and properties of military units would be final, and recently I made a third draft of what properties those units should have and how they would affect combat. The first draft (back in 2003) was too detailed with a lot of different units, which would have been to hard to balance. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/30/last-posting-of-this-year/ Sat, 30 Dec 2006 19:22:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/30/last-posting-of-this-year/ I guess this will be the last post on my blog in 2006, and I don’t want to let you switch into 2007 without a last update on the status of Projekt “W”. Again I worked a lot on the code itself, made several changes to make my life as a coder easier (e.g. a global window update, so I don’t have to care about what windows to update on what action) and most important I decided to get rid of the pixelbuffers for offscreen-rendering. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/26/next-feature-almost-done/ Tue, 26 Dec 2006 19:32:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/26/next-feature-almost-done/ Short after finishing the research feature I decided to put my fingers on the espionage part of the game. In the very first drafts this was to be only a minor feature, but I promoted it to a main feature (inlcuding it’s own button in the control center) as it adds an interesting twist to the game. It not only allows you to find weak points of your enemies, it’ll also allow you to sabotage your enemies region and division to e. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/22/research-feature-finished-and-much-coding/ Fri, 22 Dec 2006 20:24:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/22/research-feature-finished-and-much-coding/ Contrary to the last few weeks I spent most of my time last days with coding on the game, rather than making content or game design : The research feature I showed off in the last posting is now finished and you can already research your way through the (right now very small) technology tree and stuff like new buildings and technologies are unlocked along the way of your research. There is now also a nice preview image for eacht technology, though I initially wanted to also include a 3D view (like with buildings and units) I decided for just an image that I’ll prerender. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/16/next-feature-plus-some-debugging-and-cheating/ Sat, 16 Dec 2006 21:27:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/16/next-feature-plus-some-debugging-and-cheating/ Now that the regional building feature so far has been finished (I also did two more buildings since the last posting, both for research) I went on to implement the next feature, this time it’s research. I already told you that discovering new technologies would be a part of the game, though it won’t be as complex like e.g. the technology tree in the Civilization series of game, but a lot more simple. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/13/more-content-creation/ Wed, 13 Dec 2006 18:12:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/13/more-content-creation/ This is kind of a continuation to my last posting. I still spent most of the time for the project on doing content. That’s the thing about creating games that I really like, as it doesn’t only mean to write code but also to do a lot of differen things like creating graphics, models, writing a stroy and stuff. So right now I’m more in a mood to create content and that’s exactly what I’m doing. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/09/full-sail/ Sat, 09 Dec 2006 19:05:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/09/full-sail/ I would have updated my blog earlier, but work on PjW has been very fluent since the last updates, and I really got a lot of stuff done over the last weeks, though much of it was behind the scenes and can’t be really shown via screenshots. But let’s begin with the things I did that I can actually show with some nice pictures! Number one : I pushed myself to finally start modelling some of the buildings (after finishing the list of buildings to be in the game, except for some special/military buildings). https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/04/regional-3d-view-updated/ Mon, 04 Dec 2006 18:07:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/04/regional-3d-view-updated/ The detail window for a player’s region has had a 3D preview of the building you’ve built from the very start of the game’s developement, but it was utterly boring and didn’t fit the rest of the game. So I gave it a spin yesterday and wrote a prototype to try out some new ideas on how to change that 3D preview. After some hours of fiddling with different perspectives and rendering styles I came up with an isometric view that I’m rather content with, though it’s still a wip and everything (especially the 3D models of the buildings) will change, tough the view will stay like this. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/01/tidbits/ Fri, 01 Dec 2006 18:04:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/12/01/tidbits/ After the design change, I started to fix/change some smaller things that were still open (although not really annoying) mainly with the UI itself. First I made it a bit transparent, so that the newly designed 3D view now shines through the windows which makes up for a nice effect. For that I also had to change rendering of the windows in such a way that they’re rendered from back-to-front (due to the nature of OpenGL’s alpha blending), but since you usually have no more than five windows open at the same time a cheesy bubble-sort does the job. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/11/26/new-style-for-the-main-3d-view/ Sun, 26 Nov 2006 16:42:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/11/26/new-style-for-the-main-3d-view/ As already hinted at in the last post I decided to change the visual style of PjW towards a different look, which gives the player the feeling of actually having the earth between his fingers, rather than just feeling like floating around it in space. So the last days I spent on changing the visuals of the main 3D view (where you’ll spent most of your time) like I did with the nation selection screen. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/11/22/back-on-the-road-again/ Wed, 22 Nov 2006 19:34:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/11/22/back-on-the-road-again/ After putting a many hours into the latest Guild Wars Chapter (and still enjoying it) I returned to work on PjW again. One of the parts back from the old version still in the current build was the nation selection screen, and I really disliked this one. So after having the initial idea on how the new one had to look, I did a quick drawing of my new ideas and spent the last few hours on creating a new one. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/24/game-design-again/ Sun, 24 Sep 2006 17:25:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/24/game-design-again/ I’ve been doing some game design on PjW the last few days and still work a bit on it. That’s why I prefer doing games over other stuff (techdemos, engines), because it includes a lot of different things to do. It’s coding, game design, creating content (3D models and such) and much more. So if you’re tired of one part you just to something different that’s still related to the project. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/20/coding-under-the-hood/ Wed, 20 Sep 2006 17:10:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/20/coding-under-the-hood/ And another post without screenshots. That’s because I’ve mainly done stuff under the hood, so there isn’t really much to show with a screenshot this time. First I implemented save games. You may think that it’s not the best idea to implement such a feature at this early stage, but for this type of game it’s really necessary. To make it concrete I’ll use army feature of the game as an example : If I want to test this part of the game I would have to open up the army management dialogue, create a new army, assign it to a region and thest e. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/16/gui-sciences-and-stuff/ Sat, 16 Sep 2006 14:46:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/16/gui-sciences-and-stuff/ Over the last days I have put some more work into the user interface, so in addition to the overhauled control center I showed you last time I now also have a (small) system toolbar in the top left of the screen which currently has buttons for saving, loading and quitting the game. But more important is the addition of the most important informations to the control center, so the player is always uptodate on the most important values concerning his nation. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/13/new-control-center/ Wed, 13 Sep 2006 18:28:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/13/new-control-center/ After thinking a bit more about the control center, I came to the conclusion that the four buttons I initially had in mind (and more or less implemented) were not enough, which in the end would mean that the player would have to press more than just one button to get to some of the important parts of the game. And since this was something I really wanted to avoid in my current game, I had to redo the buttons and now there are six buttons on the control center. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/12/staff-and-espionage/ Tue, 12 Sep 2006 12:28:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/12/staff-and-espionage/ As opposed to what I planned in my last blog entry, I didn’t do any buildings at all cause I haven’t had much time to do work on the game over the weekend. But that doesn’t mean I did nothing! First thing I did was to flesh out the espionage (and sabotage) part of the game in my design document. At first I wanted this to be a minor part of the game with not many options, but after thinking about the whole espionage and sabotage thing, I decided to give it more importance throughout the game. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/08/buildings/ Fri, 08 Sep 2006 17:21:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/08/buildings/ Yesterday I took the next step on the stairway to finishing my current game. As you could see from the last postings, I implemented the army feature first, and now I also implemented buildings. And after starting on implementing the feature yesterday night I did a “runthrough” and implemented the whole feature, not step-by-step as with the army feature. So I made my WeldEdit export buildinginformation to XML and ingame you can now build them in a region. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/05/update/ Tue, 05 Sep 2006 18:29:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/05/update/ Sadly there are no screenshots to show off this time. But this is mainly due to the fact that I’ve spent the most time on coding the game mechanics, so on the surface nothing has changed but the game is still on it’s track (actually I’m rather surprised at how fast I advance with all the things I have planned). And besides this due to a personal loss in my family I haven’t had that much time to code since my last update. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/01/armies-and-units/ Fri, 01 Sep 2006 21:42:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/09/01/armies-and-units/ As I already told at some point, armies will play a great role in my current game, especially since it could get a bit hard trying to take over the world without any armies. So I decided this part to be the first one that I’ll try to get playable before getting to the other parts. After having my WeltEdit so far finished that I was able to create the units that’ll be in the final game, I finished the army building window in the game (see the screenshot) and the player is now able to qeue units which will then be build and transfered into a global unit pool (contrary to my first design draft, units will be managed global, not regional anymore), from which the player can assign them to an army later on. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/29/ingame-hexfield-and-more-gamedesign/ Tue, 29 Aug 2006 21:49:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/29/ingame-hexfield-and-more-gamedesign/ Coding on the game is fun, doing game design is fun, but coding boring tools to create content isn’t. So I usually switch between those three things on the fly, so that the boring part of creating tools doesn’t overweight the fun of doing the creative stuff for my current project. And therefore, after coding some hours on “WeltEdit”, the editor to create all content for my current project I went on to implement the three-dimensional hex battlefield into the game, and now have it up and running in it’s own window, nicely implemented into the GUI. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/25/tools-and-content/ Fri, 25 Aug 2006 20:11:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/25/tools-and-content/ Small note : I now put the abbreviation for the working-title of my current project before postings dealing with it, so you can directly see what the post refers to. The last days I spent on coding the tool needed for putting content into my current project. I already had some tools from the old prototype, but they were neither finished nor what I really wanted to quickly create content. So I made one single application (although not totally finished yet) where I can create all the content for my game, like region-settings, unit-info and buildings and export (and also import from) to XML. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/23/animated-skinned-ui-control/ Wed, 23 Aug 2006 12:49:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/23/animated-skinned-ui-control/ I already wrote (and posted screenshots) about the skinned controls in the GUI of my current project. And this time you can even see it in motion, as I attached a small video I captured of that control which you can see here (it’s a flash movie, about 500 KBytes big). Due to the fact that swf is not the best format for videos it doesn’t look as good as in “reality”, but you should see that I also added a fade-in and fade-out to the controls, so that the buttons slowly fade in and seem to kind of glow out when you leave their mouse area. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/20/gui-coding-and-some-hexes/ Sun, 20 Aug 2006 21:31:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/20/gui-coding-and-some-hexes/ After having done the layout for the GUI, I started to implement a new skinned control into the already existing GUI-part of the project. Basically it’s a control consisting of different parts and every part has it’s own texture (overlay, the whole control has it’s own background) and is activated (rendered) as soon as the mouse cursor enters it’s polygonal area. The area itself is specified as a polygon, so you can recreate every complex shape that such a control can have. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/18/more-on-the-gui/ Fri, 18 Aug 2006 20:38:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/18/more-on-the-gui/ Did some more work on the GUI and I guess what I’ve got now is going to make it into the final game (the screenshot already comes from within the game). It has the control center with all important buttons (still not named on the screenshot) and also plenty of space for the information the player needs to know about. And, most important, it (at least in my opionion) perfectly fits the theme of the game. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/17/some-gui-work/ Thu, 17 Aug 2006 17:01:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/17/some-gui-work/ I spent some hours doing the basic layout for the control center of the game I already posted about. After doing some drawings (by hand) to get a hang on how it should look, I fired up photoshop and after several hours (and several designs) I came up with the skeleton you can see in the screenshot (click for bigger view) on the left. Right now it misses captions and symbols, so you can’t see what the buttons (the globe in the middle is, maybe as you already guessed, for ending the current round) are done, but that’ll be added. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/15/refining-the-game-design/ Tue, 15 Aug 2006 17:10:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/15/refining-the-game-design/ Well, I’m still working at refining the design of my game project mentioned in my last entry. And since back then, alone the document in which I wrote down changes and additions to the initial gamedesign is already 10 pages long. So the ideas are flowing and everything is coming together. And this also is the first time that I ever invested so much time in writing a game-design document. Up until now I usually just wrote down outlines of my idea and implemented the details while coding, which works fine for arcade-like games (see e. https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/08/back-again/ Tue, 08 Aug 2006 22:27:00 +0000 webmaster@saschawillems.de (www.saschawillems.de) https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2006/08/08/back-again/ Well, after a bigger break I’m back at coding again (at least hobby-coding, already did some “serious” coding during the last months) and I have started to work on something new that’s actually rather old : Back in 2003 I started on a roundbased strategy-game and wrote a rather big design document and also made a working prototype (but with no actual gameplay in it). But soon I realised that the design of this game was too complex (both in terms of gameplay and in terms of content I had to create), so I dropped it.