The TurnEngine Blog

Hi all,

As you know both myself and Zedd have been chugging away at the Shadow Wars code, and are getting ready for some alphas to try and get the feel for the game and its usability, i recently posted a forum post with an ‘unofficial update’ on our progress, and felt I should spend the time making a full official blog post on our progress!

TurnEngine v3 is coming along nicely, as many of you know, this is pretty much a complete rewrite of the TurnEngine to add massive flexibility in terms of what it is capable of doing, and we’re hoping to showcase this in ShadowWars and future games.. It’s being designed in a way that is hopefully stable straight out the box, and the feature set will be complete. I’ll discuss how we are achieving this later!

Feature wise, we are adding features at a good rate, I’m going to go over what we’ve done so far, and hopefully add what changes have been made since previous incarnations of the engine:

Mail / News

The mail engine is reasonably straight forward, although completely rewritten from the previous version (you can delete mail properly now). For Shadow Wars we are going to experiment a little with merging Mail and News together into one interface, and use filtering to allow you to better refine what types of mail your are viewing. In later versions, we’re also going to allow for you to customise how ‘vocal’ the news system can be, for example a really vocal version would send a news item for every event that’s happening on your planets, rather than just Combat / Invasion

Planets

Planets are going to be similar to what you are already familiar with if you’ve played DarkGalaxy, although there’s going to be nothing special overall, we’re hoping to add a few nice touches to make actions a little speedier. We are also planning on adding filtering mechanisms to the planet list to let you select planets that are for economy, or possible strategic importance. We are also focusing on refining the planet list page to display more planets in smaller space, as well as alphabetising them to help players manage this, especially if it gets long! Below is an early concept of the planet list.

Fleets

Fleets again are similar to what you have seen before, and on top of that will include some of the enhancements seen in the planets page, careful designing will allow you to easily see the composition of a fleet, along with everything it is carrying without having to scroll too much. We’re also going to be adding the filtering system to it, again, to help you organise what your fleets are doing.

Navigation

As mentioned in a previous blog post, the new navigation systems brings a whole new dimension into Shadow Wars over previous TE based games, although due to its complexity, this wont be featuring in the first alphas / betas, we have really high hopes for it, it should allow for more strategic play amongst factions, each fighting over key sectors and outcomes determining the outcome of the war! The flexibility will also allow us to run ’smaller’ games where a handful of players fight out for dominance on a smaller playing field. We have also been discussing a lot of ‘alternate’ usage for the navigation which may make an appearance in the distant future once everything is running smoothly. We’re hoping that the new navigation design is going to lead to some battles of epic proportions where eventually both factions throw everything they have at each other, the winner being the faction which can persevere longest and start creeping forward. Every sector usurped is a sector closer to victory! You just gotta hope you don’t find a massive invasion force packed at a nearby stargate!

Combat

Combat is also something which wont be in the initial alpha for us, but should be a reasonably quick addition, the initial combat calculations will be done for the ‘casual’ game, which is much simpler than the ‘hardcore’ game which will come later, we’re going to be watching things like outcomes and combat score carefully to make sure that the winner will always get a better take of the winnings, and that suiciding fleets doesn’t result in more combat score! One of the things I’m personally looking forward to, is Stargate ambushes, linear travel means your journey from A to Z is no longer safe, there are many points where you could get engaged along the way, good team coordination will help keep you on the safe path!

Alliance

Also not yet implemented. Despite Shadow Wars being a faction vs. faction game, alliances will assist in bringing people together as a ’squad’ in the battle. Where this goes from here is entirely up to the players, will you form a HC with other alliances in your faction to co-ordinate? If so, bring your best diplomats! When resources are spread thin, you’re all going to need to closely work together and potentially commit everything you have to the war effort at once! If relationships start to sour the entire structure of your faction could collapse and fall into chaos, whilst your adversaries are there to clean up!

Trading

As you have seen from the screenshots, there is a trading button, lets talk a little about this, in a galaxy full of combat, there are always those who want to give the upper hand for profit! Introducing the black market. Here you will be able to sell your hard earned resources for credits, and in turn, purchase fully built ships for delivery in a small amount of time at an extortionate cost! This will come into play in a ‘backs to the wall’ moment, where you can sacrifice everything you have in an attempt to repel a full assaulting invasion force. But even if you win, rebuilding your resources and starting to produce ships on your own isn’t going to be easy! Other options open up with this market, supplement your fleets with black market ships whilst going for that final game winning assault in an all or nothing attempt to subdue your enemy, the possibilities are endless!

Backend Communication

We’re working carefully on the technical side to allow for a much faster backend <-> frontend communication, transparent ‘modules’ will run the communication through and allow us to dynamically switch between (for example) a highly optimised and human readable versions of the communication, which not only benefits the people playing, but allows us to very quickly diagnose bugs as and when they occur!

Design

From a design perspective, we’re focusing heavily on simplicity and usability. Although shiny graphics look nice, it’s not always the most practical solution to a problem, we’re trying to keep things clearly labled and layed out on a nice blue palette, using subtle shading of areas we want to draw your focus to, and utilising a lot of colourful icons to prevent the pages from becoming too stale and ‘monochrome’,  there’s a difficult balance of keeping the users eyes focused on specific areas without boring them too much, and being too colourful that it’s difficult to track where you are trying to go. During the design phase, we’re going to focus a lot on these types of elements, in an attempt to create a pleasurable experience when viewing and playing Shadow Wars

Testing

One of the bains of previous turnengine iterations, the number of strange bugs! Something we’re focusing on heavily in this version of TurnEngine is test suites and simulations. There’s a huge library of tests for all individual components of the engine, in addition to a dummy UI to allow us to ‘dry run’ certain features, and test for unusual behaviour. There will of course be bugs in the alpha / beta versions, but we’re hoping that they are going to be minor in comparison to some of the larger (and more obscure) bugs that made their way into DarkGalaxy. Also, as mentioned before, we’re able to quickly switch and monitor what the throughput between the frontend and the backend, which will help us identify the location of a problem and resolve it more quickly.

Full Development in Java

Both the backend and frontend are going to be developed in Java, the departure from PHP for the frontends is one we decided to make together, as both myself and Zedd are good Java developers, we can both be involved in all aspects of the development, it also comes with the benefit that Java is a much faster language than PHP when it comes to handling large volumes of data. It also allows us to speed up the development process, and drop in libraries to ease development, and the Object Oriented nature means fixes for issues should come through a lot faster without having to sift through copious amounts of code. It also has the benefit of having a very powerful debugging suite, which makes it easier to just step through problematic code and find the cause of issues.

We’re hoping to get the first alpha going as soon as we possibly can, and we are satisfied of the quality. Until then, watch this space!

Ships

There are only three combat military ships in the game: Fighter, Bomber & Battleship. These provide a rock-paper-scissors type approach to combat that should simplify the system for new players, but hopefully still make the game tactical enough for die-hard players.

To invade hostile colonies, Drop Ships are required to carry the attack Droids. A Colony Ship is required to settle a new planet. A Trading Ship allows resources to be transferred for free between colonies in different systems.

Figher
- Military ship
- Good vs Bomber

Bomber
- Military ship
- Good vs Colony Ship
- Good vs Drop Ship
- Good vs Trading Ship
- Good vs Battleship

Battleship
- Military ship
- Good vs Fighter
- Good vs Colony Ship
- Good vs Drop Ship
- Good vs Trading Ship

Combat

When a fleet moves into the same square as a hostile fleet, combat occurs. All ships fire simultaniously in combat. Allied fleets (those of the same faction) will combine into one huge fleet as do those in the opposing faction. Combat is resolved each turn, on the turn, and does not always result in all ships from one side or the other (or indeed any ships) being destroyed. To improve the chances of success in combat, it is useful overwhelm the hostile force using overkill.

Overkill
- Each ship has a Military Strength
- If an Allied fleet has a combined Strength over 4x greater than the combined Hostile fleet Strength, the Hostile ships damage is HALVED

Military Command

Each player must choose early on whether to go for a military role or merchant role in the game. The military ranks can be purchased at any time, although they must be purchased in order. Each rank improves the speed at which military ships can be built, and enables purchase of selected military ships.

Military Rank (Major)
- 10% improvement in military build times
- Enables purchase of Fighter & Bomber

Military Rank (Colonel)
- Prevents “Guild Rank (Trader)”
- 20% improvement in military build times
- Enables purchase of Droid & Drop Ship

Military Rank (General)
- Prevents “Guild Rank (Master)”
- 50% improvement in military build times
- Enables purchase of Battleship

Merchants Guild
The merchant guild ranks can be purchased at any time, although they must be purchased in order. Each rank improves the amount of income from trading stations depending on how many other trading stations are close by, as well as enabling purchase of selected civilian ships.

Guild Rank (Member)
- Trading income bonus for all faction trading stations up to one jump away.
- Enables purchase of Colony Ship

Guild Rank (Trader)
- Prevents “Military Rank (Colonel)”
- Trading income bonus for all faction trading stations up to two jumps away.
- Enables purchase of Trading Ship

Guild Rank (Master)
- Prevents “Military Rank (General)”
- Trading income bonus for all faction trading stations up to three jumps away.
- Enables purchase of Jump Ship

Resources

There are going to be three resources in the game: Mass, Energy & Credits. Mass and Energy will be quick and easy to get a steady income from, however Credits are more difficult to get hold of. Mass is essential early on for building structures and ships, while those who concentrate on energy will be able to benefit more from the special abilities. Credits are generally useful, especially for emergency situations, however they are harder to get lots of and the rate of exchange when trading is poor.

Credits
- Low rate of income
- Essential to hire Planetary Governer/Fleet Admiral
- Essential to purchase Guild Licence/Military Rank
- Buy/Sell of Mass/Energy is expensive
- Buy/Sell of Droid/Fighter/Bomber/Battleship very expensive

Mass
- High rate of income
- Essential to produce structures & ships

Energy
- Moderate rate of income
- Required for special abilities

Game Types

When you first join a game, two major game types will be available: Casual & Dedicated. Casual games will be a configured to be more beneficial for new players or those who are not able to play regularly. Dedicated games will be configured to be most beneficial for those players who are experienced or able to login daily.

There will also be tournament games regularly for those die-hards who want to challenge for a title and cash prizes. These games will typically be very short and intense, and only a few players can play in each game. A tournament can also be set up at any time between players who wish to do so. These games will take place in very small galaxies.

Casual Game Type

• Longer build times
• Longer movement times
• More expensive and time consuming to hire planetary governers, fleet admirals
• Protection time to allow players to colonise home system
• Defences more powerful
• Large sized galaxy
• All systems are the equal

Dedicated Game Type

• Shorter build times
• Shorter movement times
• Less expensive and time consuming to hire planetary governers & fleet admirals
• No system protection
• Defences less powerful
• Medium sized galaxy
• Neutral systems will have better planets than home systems

Tournament Games

• Intense one-day games, also longer one month games.
• Pay-to-play, premium players only
• Winners receive cash prizes
• Small number of players
• Tiny galaxy

Officials

To control the rate at which players can aquiring planets or create new fleets, officials must be hired to administer them. These measures protect newer players by giving some guarantee that a number of planets will always be available to colonize or even invade. Dedicated players will still be able to aquire planets more quickly than casual players, but not take more than their fair share.

Officials can be hired at any time, if you have sufficient credits. They do take time to hire though as well, so don’t think you can just hire them at a moments notice in time to colonise or invade, you will need to plan in advance.

Planetary Governer

• Hire Planetary Governers to administer Colonies
• Can not colonize or invade without a free governer

Fleet Admiral

• Hire Fleet Admirals to command Fleets
• Can not create a new fleet without a free admirals

One of the most important features of Shadow Wars is the galaxy layout. Rather than the traditional Dark Galaxy ‘anywhere-to-anywhere’ model, the Shadow Wars galaxy has a much more intuitive layout. The basic idea was to restict travel to specific wormholes between solar systems in the galaxy. This makes movement very linear and creates battlegrounds where the major travel route bottlenecks are located.

Writing a system like this seemed relatively easy, but once I started working on the project a few issues came up. The first was linking the systems together. The algorithm i wrote aimed at linking each system to its nearest 3 neighbours. This worked fine, but once i rendered the links on an image an issue was immediately obvious - some of the links crossed each other, messing up the visual experience. To solve it I checked ALL the existing links when adding a new one, not adding it if it crossed any existing link.

The second problem was not only a visual problem, but a show-stopper. If the galaxy was not densely enough packed with stars, isolated collections of stars would be generated, small islands of stars, not conneted to the rest of the galaxy. To solve this I added a special checking algorithm that identified all the islands of stars in the galaxy and connected them together by their nearest systems.

These initial algorithms and a demonstration applet were actually written last year. This code has been pulled out, cleaned, polished and improved, and now its ready to back the new Shadow Wars game. I added a little image-generator utility to the code so i could quickly generate galaxies and play around with the settings. Here are a few of the generated images to give you a little more of an idea of what can been done with the layout.

As there are two factions in this game, take note of the green/red - these colours are there to represent the starting positions of the players in the two factions.

The galaxy systems (including faction colours)

The galaxy systems (including factions & wormholes linking them)

There are quite a lot of options that will allow the galaxy to be made larger or smaller, increase/decrease density and number of lines (wormholes), and number of systems per faction. The above example has 2000 systems, 500 for each faction (red/green) and 1000 neutral in the middle. Here is another example with 600 systems, 200 for each faction and 200 neutral in the middle.

600 systems, 200 for each faction

600 systems, 200 for each faction (only two wormholes per system)

I’ll play around with the settings, perhaps make a really crazily large one and a tiny one for fun

A lot of people have been asking if we are working on anything specific, and the answer is, well, yes.. Yes we are.

ShadowWars was originally slated to replace DarkGalaxy as a dominant Space Based Strategy, we’ve taken what could be defined as a lot of the problems with the DarkGalaxy game play, and tried to improve on them as much as possible, resulting in a game which is much easier to pick up and play, and is more balanced. Below I’m going to list a few of the features, and attempt to explain the reasoning behind them. Please note: All information provided here is subject to change during game development.

Endless Gameplay

One of the things that gets frequently brought to our attention about DG, is the inability to complete games due to the turn limit, one of the first things we want to do with ShadowWars is just give an end condition of “total annihilation”, and leave the game running permanently until this occurs. This has been made possible with faction based game play (see below), and allows games to last weeks / months maybe even years if people continue to fight the good fight.

Faction Based Gameplay

One of the bigger problems in DG is the ability for a single large alliance to just dominate, the goals were to get as many good people into your alliance as possible, resulting in what could be defined as ’superpowers’ in the universe, if any small alliance stepped in the way, they were trodden on, and newer players to the game were having difficulties getting any sort of foothold without submitting to them.

The concept behind factions, is that there are only two opposing sides fighting against each other. The concept of alliances will still remain inside the greater faction, but you can only war against those on the other side. This essentially allows for ’squads’ of people forcing their way forward (see Navigation below) and working together towards the end goal. We will be looking to add bonuses for working in an alliance, so it’s not something to be completely ignored, but those at this point are changing frequently. This allows players to not only go lone-wolf if they choose, but it gives them a chance to make an impact in some way.

Linear Navigation

The change to navigation is quite substantial, we will be moving from the current system, and making something new and shiny. We’re basing the entire game in a single galaxy, which happens to be dark (just a coincidence :p). We’re running around the idea that to get from A->C, you have to go through B. Each system will have several planets, and at least one ‘SpaceGate’ (Name subject to change) connecting it to nearby systems. You will go through the gates, travel across a systems, then go out the gate on the other side, then rinse / repeat until you’ve reached your destination. To make things interesting, it will be possible to place fleets on either end of the gate, and have them ambush opposing fleets coming through. This adds an interesting dynamic to the game, as due to navigation paths, there may be some key systems which should be defended to the best of their ability, but at the same time, the opposing faction will be working together to destroy your block and exploit it as a good entrance into your territory. This is where teamwork comes into play heavily, the fighting will be a tense back and forth in the center of the galaxy.. Oh, and to add to the fun, there will be no homeworld protection, it will take a LONG time to get back there and the journey will be full of peril, but flanking them would be hugely beneficial to your faction!

At the end of the day, pictures speak louder than words, so there are some example images of something that’s been worked on. Again, this is FAR from complete, it’s more of a test application which we’ve been playing about with, but should give you a reasonable idea of what i’m talking about. Click the thumbnails to expand them.

Simplified Gameplay

To help keep new players participating in games, the game mechanics are going to be easier to understand, to that end, we hope to drop the number of resources down to two (maybe three), but there will be no location population, and we’ll also be doing away with research. Game cues will prompt users on how to do things, and a UI featuring more modern web technologies (for example, drag and drop) will allow the user to do things like edit queues easily and efficiently. We will also be dropping the number of combat ready ships to a handful, and adopting more of a ‘rock-paper-scissors’ approach to combat, but maintaining enough depth for the hard-core strategists to put their skill to use.

Admittedly, there will be a lot of questions / comments about this subject specifically, please feel free to voice them in the comment section, please remember that all comments are moderated to avoid inappropriateness. Thanks for reading

Something I’ve learned (possibly the hard way), over the past few years, is that playing games in a development environment is absolutely no substitute to playing the games against other people, which, at the end of the day, makes a lot of the decisions made personal. I can sit here for hours and say “Yep, they would like this”, but I’ve never really stopped to ask the question “But would they?”.. So, with this in mind, I’m hoping to extend an olive branch back to the community with some posts known as ‘Ask the Players’, where I chuck out general ideas, and you form them into something a little more specific, not only to see if we are on the same page, but to allow the creativity flow both ways. There may be some ideas which your thousands of game play hours may be able to contribute and have taken on board.

To allow for everyone’s voices to be heard, i wont be asking for technical implementations, or for users to produce code (I’ll be handling that myself!), but instead just general descriptions or if you’re feeling creative, a few images, and with a little luck, I’ll be able to generate something which meets most peoples need.

Obviously, I have full discretion on the features / functionality implemented, and may not be able to give feedback on every suggestion, and you may not see every suggestion plugged into the next produced game either, but I’ll endeavour to have the best suggestions implemented in some form or another, so when the new games come along, we’ll have something which is intuitive, accessible and easy to play for everyone.

The first ‘Ask the Players’ will be coming in a couple of days, so stay tuned!

Welcome one and all to the new TurnEngine blog, a place where myself and Zedd can dump random thoughts, on both a general and Technical level with all those who hope to keep track of the development process.

The blog is separated into different sections (indicated on the right), although everything we post will be presented on this page, if you’re not interested in the technical details, you can just hit the ‘General’ link and see all the English (as opposed to geek) posts. We’ll try and make sure everything goes to the right place

All comments will be moderated by myself, to help prevent the same spamming here we occasionally see on the forums (you know who you are :P).

We also provide RSS feeds on this blog, so feel free to subscribe, and be notified whenever we make a new post

Enjoy!