Hello!  I want to take a few moments and post an introduction to Combat Leader.  This will an open-source, free-to-play tactical wargame covering the period from 1898 to the present day (and maybe near future).  Scale is 50 yards per hex, individual squads/teams, vehicles, and guns. Players will be able to issue commands to troops in pausible real-time and then watch them be carried out.  All aspects of 20th century tactical combat will be simulated, including airpower, artillery, etc. 

There is an obvious question -- what makes Combat Leader different from other games? 

The first is that it is a non-commercial project.  There are very fine commercial wargames (I should know, I've bought plenty of them), but this means that development of the product is generally limited to people who are receiving a financial stake in the game.  In turn, this limits the number of people who can work on the game.  By constrast, something like Linux has a potentially unlimited pool of developers and designers.  The tradeoff is that the overall cohesion and production values of the product can suffer, since work happens from the bottom-up, instead of the top-down. 

Second, related to the first, is that it means that content creation becomes the province of the community as a whole.  While this happens often as part of the "modding process" for commercial games, with an open-source product, it can occur at all levels of the application.  If there are optimizations for data storage, for example, this can be carried out by anyone with an interest in doing so.

Third, the design of Combat Leader itself is different.  Most people probably remember the original X-Com, and to a lesser extent, X-Com Apocalypse.  The original X-Com was turn-based, and XC:A offered a choice between turn-based action and pausible real-time action.  I played the turn-based version of XC:A, being used to this experience from X-Com, didn't like how long the battles took to play, then switched to the real-time version just for grins.  I loved the real-time experience, being much faster to play, and also more "fluid." 

Fourth, and one thing that excites me most about Combat Leader, is going to be the sheer number of customization options, for example around content creation and campaigns.  I always like when tactical wargames are linked into campaigns.  It gives me a feel for the "stake" of a particular battle -- is stopping a patrol going to change the outcome of the larger campaign?  (there will also be an area-movement based campaign engine, like Close Combat).  Additionally, if something is lacking, people will have a pathway for adding it. 

Fifth, the game design is going to be modular and portable.  The only platform-specific parts will be the graphics and the file handling.  This means that it can be ported to Mac, Linux, whatever else comes down the road (hopefully, tablets at some point, too). 

There is lots more, and it will be covered regularly in the blog at www.combatleader.blogspot.com

Finally, a little bit about me.  I am a web software developer by profession, mostly working on enterprise-level case management systems.  I have also been gaming since my father picked up a copy of Bismarck in the late 70s, mowed grass to get a copy of the original Squad Leader, and paid for part of my wife's engagement ring by selling some of my wargame collection (I still had enough left over to fill a closet and then some).  I started working on the design of Combat Leader around three years ago, and finally feel it's "mature" enough to seriously begin coding on it.  One motivation for working on it is to do some coding that's not work-related (I love to code, but work involves a certain set of constraints), and to have what I would consider my "dream game" available for me to play when I want. 

However, maybe my most important motivation for working on this is because I hope that someone will stumble across the game, play it out of curiousity, and be motivated to learn more about history.  It's particularly poignant when, on this Memorial Day, many Americans simply know nothing about why their relatives and ancestors died in service of the country.  Hitler was not a Civil War general and we fought on the side of the Russians in WW2, not against them.

Thanks for your time to read this and remember to visit the Combat Leader blog at www.combatleader.blogspot.com. 

Check with Matrix Games to see if they have the rights to Combat Leader as a game name.

I use WinXP and ubuntu linux. Nice to see that you are thinking of other platforms.

Good luck with the project.

Originally Posted By junk2drive (28 MAY 2012 9:23am)

Check with Matrix Games to see if they have the rights to Combat Leader as a game name.

 

I use WinXP and ubuntu linux. Nice to see that you are thinking of other platforms.

 

Good luck with the project.

 

I'll check to see -- wasn't aware that they had a game with the same name, although it doesn't really matter what mine is called.  I'd always thought of "combat leader" as a placeholder name.

The idea is to code it so that anyone can basically rewrite the graphics layer and file i/o layer and save all the rest of the game logic, so it should be portable to whatever, wherever. 

Finally, it's open to anyone for to help with, if they want to.  Lots of room for that.

Read your blog.

I have worked on a few games as a tester and curmudgeon. One thing that I have seen a few times from programmers is that they don't think of things that should be in a game, and when players request/demand them, the programmer says that it is too difficult or impossible to add in. Judging from your list of games played, you should have a good grasp on what you liked about each of them. Don't forget to plan ahead.

Try Armoured Brigade, it's free, real time pausable, top down 2D, Cold War currently. It seems to be a lot like what your intentions are.

Originally Posted By junk2drive (28 MAY 2012 1:13pm)

Read your blog.

 

I have worked on a few games as a tester and curmudgeon. One thing that I have seen a few times from programmers is that they don't think of things that should be in a game, and when players request/demand them, the programmer says that it is too difficult or impossible to add in. Judging from your list of games played, you should have a good grasp on what you liked about each of them. Don't forget to plan ahead.

 

Try Armoured Brigade, it's free, real time pausable, top down 2D, Cold War currently. It seems to be a lot like what your intentions are.

I just looked at the Armoured Brigade web page and will have to give it a try later.  It looks interesting, like Tac Ops, maybe?

One issue that seems to come up is that there isn't enough planning into *how* to make a game open-ended enough.  I've been fortunate (or unfortunate) enough to work on enterprise-level projects where the emphasis is on expandability, so I'm trying to architect the game from that standpoint.  One of the reasons I decided to start blogging about it early on (and will release a pre-alpha early) was exactly to try to get community feedback and start including that in the game itself. Optionally, for anyone who enjoys coding, there's going to be a lot of opportunity to do some heavy lifting. 

The other side of the coin is making it so that there can be a collaborative effort with the code.  Developing a strong AI is a real concern for me, since much of my own play is single-player (I'm already thinking about multiplayer, don't worry, folks

If you would rather converse elsewhere than here, let me know.

Armoured Brigade has been in dev for a few years. I tried to like it but I gave up real time years ago after loving Close Combat but realizing that I got too old mentally to keep up. The dev is an old Steel Panthers player. The game is squads and individual AFVs.

Since dabbling in linux, I followed a bit of open source games. Battle for Wesnoth is a good turn based game. The owner? keeps control of the main program, but you can change a lot of things in the game. There are websites that list or comment on open source games and engines. I would think that using an off the shelf engine would be better for you in your first attempt.

Here at wargamer, ghostryder started a thread about writing your own game that is worth searching for.

Originally Posted By junk2drive (28 MAY 2012 2:25pm)

If you would rather converse elsewhere than here, let me know.

 

Armoured Brigade has been in dev for a few years. I tried to like it but I gave up real time years ago after loving Close Combat but realizing that I got too old mentally to keep up. The dev is an old Steel Panthers player. The game is squads and individual AFVs.

 

Since dabbling in linux, I followed a bit of open source games. Battle for Wesnoth is a good turn based game. The owner? keeps control of the main program, but you can change a lot of things in the game. There are websites that list or comment on open source games and engines. I would think that using an off the shelf engine would be better for you in your first attempt.

 

Here at wargamer, ghostryder started a thread about writing your own game that is worth searching for.

Talking here is fine -- I'm sure some other people will find it interesting.

SP was/is one of my favorite games, still, especially the updated camo workshop versions.  Just takes a long time to play. 

I have Wesnoth on my tablet and pull it out when I don't feel like reading or being productive.  Perfect translation to the mobile environment.  

I exchanged a couple of emails with Eric S. Raymond a while back about open source/closed source games and what kind of graphics engine made sense.  XNA is useful for right now, but I will probably follow his suggestion and look for something else once I get to a pre-alpha point.  I looked a little at commercial wargame engines and didn't think I would be gaining much by exploring them, unfortunately. 

After thinking about it a little today, I'm going to switch the name of the game from Combat Leader to Open Tactics.  Matrix doesn't list Combat Leader as a product (and, in fact, searching in their page didn't display anything pertaining to the game), but I respect that they've already got content which uses it.  I actually was going to use "Open Tactics" a while back, but dropped it for some random reason.  It does seem to more fully describe what I'm trying to do with this idea anyway.

Junk, how long can Matrix hold onto the rights to a (albiet generic) name of a product they never released?

I can barely read and write and you think I'm a lawyer???

John, CL was a stillborn Matrix replacement for SPWAW. It looked similar to CC but turn based. I think there are some links at Slitherine buried in a thread about the upcoming 3D CC game.

My job has me near exhaustion every day lately. I bought Conflict of Heroes and only played one tutorial. I just can't fire up any game right now.

Anyway... I know what I liked about CC, SP, CM and what I didn't like. I keep looking for a replacement. I can't do real time. I get bored with tedious hex movement. Battle Academy was great until I got into designing and started finding the limitations. One level of height is one of them. The SP variants have different heights but hard to read in 2D. Campaign Series has the psudo 3D terrain but it is not life like. I like WEGO. Taking turns is like playing tic tac toe against yourself at some point. Conflict of Heroes gives turns a twist with its system. Haven't played it enough to know if it is a happy medium. At least it has 3D terrain and 3D units if you choose. My old eyes can see the units, see the terrain, and understand what is going on.

This will keep you busy for a while

http://www.wargamer.com/forums/posts.asp?t=345727

http://www.wargamer.com/forums/posts.asp?t=345520

http://www.wargamer.com/forums/posts.asp?t=376476

http://www.wargamer.com/forums/posts.asp?t=345620

http://www.wargamer.com/forums/posts.asp?t=530273

As for the artwork, I suggest using Microsoft Paint and that all the files be saved in *.BMP format (Microsoft  Paint).

That makes it easy for anybody to work on the artwork.

.

.

Originally Posted By Joe-from-Ryans- (28 MAY 2012 5:31pm)

As for the artwork, I suggest using Microsoft Paint and that all the files be saved in *.BMP format (Microsoft  Paint).

 

That makes it easy for anybody to work on the artwork.

 

.

.

 

Actually, I ran into a transparency rendering issue when using Microsoft Paint.  I didn't post a screenshot, but there was basically Color.White bleeding all over the place.  I redid my textures with Paint.NET (a powerful and free paint program), and didn't run into the same problem.  Just for grins, I tried it in both .bmp and .png format, so who knows what the problem with Paint is. 

There are pros and cons to .png vs. .bmp.  .png handles transparency more elegantly and is smaller.  .bmp isn't normally compressed, but is generally easier to work with and mroe widely used.

I would do more than just use bitmaps.

Make the game's ability to read the bitmaps scalable, so that as long as the modded bitmaps always preserve the same proportions, the game will always  be able to read them.  What this means is that you can make the bitmaps that come with the vanilla version of the game fairly low resolution, but if the game can read anything that has the right file name, a modder can come along and remake a low res bitmap as an ultra high resolution bitmap.   

Combat Mission did this to very good effect back in the old days, but there are still game publishers out there who haven't figured this one out. 

Find attached a zip file

I wrote a proposal for just such a game 8 years ago.

I posted it it on a few wargaming forums at the time with no response.

Can people see the zip file attached???

.

No

Originally Posted By Joe-from-Ryans- (28 MAY 2012 6:10pm)

Find attached a zip file

 

I wrote a proposal for just such a game 8 years ago.

 

I posted it it on a few wargaming forums at the time with no response.

 

Can people see the zip file attached???

 

.

 

 

 

Joe, I can't see it, unfortunately.

Originally Posted By Philippe (28 MAY 2012 5:54pm)

I would do more than just use bitmaps.

 

Make the game's ability to read the bitmaps scalable, so that as long as the modded bitmaps always preserve the same proportions, the game will always  be able to read them.  What this means is that you can make the bitmaps that come with the vanilla version of the game fairly low resolution, but if the game can read anything that has the right file name, a modder can come along and remake a low res bitmap as an ultra high resolution bitmap.   

 

Combat Mission did this to very good effect back in the old days, but there are still game publishers out there who haven't figured this one out. 

Philippe,

Thanks for the suggestion, hadn't thought about that before.  Soon up on the to-do list is write code to handle zooming in and out, meaning I'll probably bundle this functionality along with that.

lets try again

Originally Posted By JohnCCL (28 MAY 2012 5:50pm)

There are pros and cons to .png vs. .bmp.  .png handles transparency more elegantly and is smaller.  .bmp isn't normally compressed, but is generally easier to work with and mroe widely used.

I strongly suggest you to use .png files with alpha channel, you can edit them,  less or more easily, with some free applications like Paint.NET, GIMP, Photofiltre and PhotoScape

I too use Paint.Net.  It just an improved version of Microsoft Paint.

Again Paint.Net can be used by we amateurs to improve the graphics of any game.

Horray! I uploaded he ZIP file.

I look forward to peoples comments

Originally Posted By JMass (29 MAY 2012 7:47am)

Originally Posted By JohnCCL (28 MAY 2012 5:50pm)

There are pros and cons to .png vs. .bmp.  .png handles transparency more elegantly and is smaller.  .bmp isn't normally compressed, but is generally easier to work with and mroe widely used.

 

I strongly suggest you to use .png files with alpha channel, you can edit them,  less or more easily, with some free applications like Paint.NET, GIMP, Photofiltre and PhotoScape

 

 

I think at this point, I'm going to default to using .png files, as most of my test textures are already using that, being the default from Paint.NET.  The size savings makes them attractive, for one thing.  I know they render at the same size as bitmaps, but I don't see that as being a major disadvantage. 

Originally Posted By Joe-from-Ryans- (29 MAY 2012 3:46pm)

I too use Paint.Net.  It just an improved version of Microsoft Paint.

 

Again Paint.Net can be used by we amateurs to improve the graphics of any game.

 

View Attachment: proposal.zip

 

Joe,

For some reason, the attachment won't open for me.  Are you releasing these ideas into the public domain, though? 

I have to say, I'm not too crazy about making a distinction between professional and amateurs devs.  I've seen some awfully hackish professional code and some very nice amateur code.  Oddly enough, I would guess that even most people working at the enterprise level of development don't actually have a computer science background, so I think most of the barrier to entry is psychological.

Its not supposd to open instead it should be available for download.

Perhaps I just upload it over at Matrix Games.

.

Originally Posted By Joe-from-Ryans- (29 MAY 2012 7:02pm)

Its not supposd to open instead it should be available for download.

 

Perhaps I just upload it over at Matrix Games.

 

.

 

That might work.  You might also consider posting it on scribd. 

Speaking of bonehead coding...I was working on hex selection tonight and ran into some wholly unexpected behavior (selection was jumping around, etc).  I put in a breakpoint, started looking at the array of hexes and realized I swapped the indexes by accident...d'oh!