Dragons Hobbies Forum
Gaming => Conquest Of The Empire Online => Topic started by: Dragon on August 08, 2012, 01:13:42
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I've been getting back to the Conquest online game that I put together several years ago. Tonight I finished putting in some updates to include some changes that were made with the latest version of Conquest of the Empire (Eagle Games, 2005). The changes are long over due, but finally in place. Hopefully I'll continue to make progress and get the game, interested in joining me for a game? My version is by no means the greatest, actually, it was one of my first web development projects where I used PHP and MySQL, but I've enjoyed it, and if you've had fun playing Milton Bradley's Game Master series in the past, you might enjoy it too. (See a sample game at http://dragonhobbies.com/games/cote/map.php?gameid=1)
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In case anyone has any questions about the game, feel free to ask. This is an open invitation to anyone who is a member (registration is free if you're not a member already) of this site, not just the people that I know personally.
Oh, and I've attached a screenshot of the game board, for those who want a really quick preview.
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I TOTALLY FORGOT HOW TO PLAY!!!! But I will check it out and see if I can get involved. I'd enjoy spending more "time" with you.
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Ok Charles, I got a two player game started so that you can catch onto the rules again. If you'd like to stop after a couple turns to reset or for a game with more players, just let me know.
http://dragonhobbies.com/games/cote/map.php?gameid=15
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I wanna play!
Also, I'd be interested in an update of the territory screens. Instead of just the names of each adjacent territory on a line, having a close-up picture with the names on it would be way easier to follow. As it is, I remember doing a bunch of jumping back and forth between territory pages and the main screen.
I would be willing to work those up in Photoshop for you if you are interested.
Like this'n:
(https://www.dragonshobbies.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fa1.ec-images.myspacecdn.com%2Fimages02%2F149%2F03dcf3ac935a45c388b65ca2aed64c1a%2Fl.jpg&hash=a9545fc6e649ee02a8a3fb71d58430674015988d)
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Yeah, I do remember talking with you about that before. I definitely want to do that. If you can put together the images, that will definitely speed up the process.
By the way, do you want to play one-on-one with me, or are would you prefer a game with more? I know that Charles said he'd prefer just a one-on-one game right now, but I think Phillip would be up for a three player game. ... Also, Chris, if you wouldn't mind, please go through the setup options to setup our game. I think I've been the only one to ever use them and I'd like to know if there is an error for other people, or what. I know there are some things that need to be changed, like allowing people to send non-members an invitation and invitation confirmation, but I'd really just like to know if it works at all how it is now.
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I'll start a 2-player with you. If you want to add a 3-player with Phillip, I'm in if you're sure he'll keep checking. :)
For the images, Just the map with no names? If that's the case, could you e-mail me the image of the board, or would you want me to design a new board?
Also, do you have a preference of size. My exmple has a small window, but there seems to be plenty of available real estate on the page.
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Sending some info to you via email.
By the way, if you have your notifications turned on for the forum, you should also be getting an email message now each time it's your turn. That's under Profile > Notification and Email. Put a checkmark next to "Receive forum announcements and important notifications by email."
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hehe, thanks. But I usually check this site when I check my e-mail.
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Just out of curiosity... Did you possibly happen to fix that issue of one attack round per turn that made the game take so long, and gave an hugely unfair advantage to the defender?
I ask because I only just remembered how extremely frustrated I got over that last time, and that it made me not want to play it again till it was fixed.
Just curious... :-*
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Nope, not fixed yet. I have a couple different ideas for it. I'll try to work on it this week.
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Dragon,
You are going to have to kill our game of Conquest.
Widget is heating up due to the 9/15 and 10/15 deadlines. It's EARLY...but that is great for business.
But it will kill my ability to play Conquest...for now. I'm sorry.
I'm looking forward to Sunday, however.
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Ok. No problem. Thanks for letting me know.
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Question: I have two ships on two unconnected coasts of the same territory, and the only button for the general is "Load Ship". Since loading a general on a ship kills his movement, how can I be sure which ship he'll get loaded on to before I make an unchangable commitment?
Related question: Any plans to have a reset button that will undo all your actions for the current phase? I only ask because I bought that ship on the other coastline by accident, and would love to have been able to undo it. That and several other small accidental clicks I occasionaly make. It has gotten to the point that I have to make a shopping list out of paranoia that I will make a mistake. :-[
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For your first question, unfortunately, that was not something that I had thought of when I originally wrote the program. It will probably pick the first one it would find in the database, which normally* would be the lowest number. (*It might be a higher numbered ship if a lower numbered ship was destroyed, hence deleted from the database, and a higher numbered ship was created later filling the lower number's place. Of course, you'd never know when that might happen because it could even be in a different game. Sorry about the db mumbo-jumbo. I just felt like that needed more of an explanation than simply saying what normally would happen.) I can probably modify the system with a drop down menu to select which ship your guys are loading onto.
Regarding your second question, at this point, the entire system works with only the present status being recorded. In the Battle Log you can see the history of what has gone on, but that is only a textual description and there is no way to back up what has gone on even from that because there are so many other elements that are not recorded. I have wanted to have a playback feature so that people could replay what was going on during other players' turns, but that would require a major rewrite of the system to accommodate it. It is something that I would like to do eventually, but not something that will get done soon at all. A shopping cart system using temporary storage for the purchase phase would be much more feasible as a short term goal.
By the way, I have been making progress on the next update to the battle system. I'm not sure if I'll be putting it in as an option to the system or a solid switch. The current battle system plays through one round of combat. If all the defenders are killed, the attackers win, otherwise any surviving attackers retreat. The new battle system will be a fight to the death.
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Response to first answer: um, ok. ??? I guess I'll just have to move out the ship I don't want being loaded, then move it back after the other one goes. ::) I guess it wouldn't matter if I was planning to load both ships, since I could just load the generals first, then assign them the appropriate troops after, but since I just have the one general...
Just had a thought. I know nothing about programming, but since there is no "Load ship" button when the territory has no ships, would it be possible to have a button for each ship labeled "Load ship X"?
Response to second answer: a 'shopping cart' would be aces! As for the other thing, even just the ability to undo your last action would go a long way to prevent hair pulling mistakes like double clicking the wrong thing.
Response to BTdubs: That almost sounds worse! It probably wouldn't matter as much if we had unlimited generals, but I would hate to have say a 14 man army get chewed alive by 4 cannons and not have the option to stop the carnage and also lose 2 generals in the process. But if you think it's a good idea to start shoving meat into a grinder and then not be able to stop if you reach fingers, go right ahead! :P
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Then again, I could always accidentally load my Ceaser onto the boat by accident and not realize it until after I'd sent him out on his own... that could happen. :-[
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OK. I'll fix it for you. I'm guessing you're talking about Game XVII. Which general were you trying to load onto the ship?
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Response to first answer: um, ok. ??? I guess I'll just have to move out the ship I don't want being loaded, then move it back after the other one goes. ::) I guess it wouldn't matter if I was planning to load both ships, since I could just load the generals first, then assign them the appropriate troops after, but since I just have the one general...
Just had a thought. I know nothing about programming, but since there is no "Load ship" button when the territory has no ships, would it be possible to have a button for each ship labeled "Load ship X"?
Do you prefer the separate button because of confusion with drop down menus? I could do either one.
Response to second answer: a 'shopping cart' would be aces! As for the other thing, even just the ability to undo your last action would go a long way to prevent hair pulling mistakes like double clicking the wrong thing.
Even just being able to undo one move would require quite a bit to be added or modified in the system. The only "Undo" that is possible in this system requires you to hold your mouse button down when you click it and slowly drag the cursor away from what you clicked on before releasing it. Of course, that's probably more dependent on browser behavior.
Response to BTdubs: That almost sounds worse! It probably wouldn't matter as much if we had unlimited generals, but I would hate to have say a 14 man army get chewed alive by 4 cannons and not have the option to stop the carnage and also lose 2 generals in the process. But if you think it's a good idea to start shoving meat into a grinder and then not be able to stop if you reach fingers, go right ahead! :P
Remember in Futurama, the captain that sent "wave after wave" of troops against the kill-bots until they reached their maximum kill limit. ;D Seriously though, eventually the options would be expanded to retreat after losing a percentage of your original force, with options being 25%, 50%, or 75%. If you think it would be better to have those options in place before putting in the new battle system, I'll work on that... With that in mind, I guess I should make the new Battle To Death system an option for each game, in case someone prefers the original single round battle system. If you remember, the combat system from the original board game had each player rolling one die alternating until the attacker gave up or died.
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Even the percentage thing doesn't sound ideal. What if I have it set to 75%.. my 16 troops attack your 10. kill, kill, kill... death, death, death... I have 4 artillery left and you have 1 infantry. If given the choice I would of course keep going, but if I had 4 infantry and you had 6 artillery, I'd stop. It's not about the percentage, it's about the odds. Sure, we can always make more kill-bots, but we only get the 6 generals. :P
What about adding a checkbox on the die result screen for each battle. Then when you click a "continue" button, all the battles you have checked keep going another round, and you get another result screen.
For the load ship buttons, my idea was just a suggestion, but either is good. No preference.
Oh, and don't worry about the Ceaser, I moved a lot of things I wouldn't have after I made that mistake... he is yours to capture. "TC out!" means just what it sounds like. ;)
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Thanks for the ideas. I'll look into this some more.
Here's an idea, that might make too big of an impact on the game to keep the original feel, but what if we could buy more generals? That might fix the effect that you're worried about from the Battle To Death system. I was thinking that we could set the price higher than the Artillery (Catapults), just to keep them them from flooding the game, but it might also encourage more trading between players if the cost of a captive general was less than "training" a new one. I'd have to look through the code to see how difficult it would be to implement... but anyway, what do you think?
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OK guys. I've put in a couple more updates. Since Game V is one of the oldest running games, I'm not sure how many of the comments that are posted as messages in that game are still an issue, so if you come across a problem, please post it here on the forum.
A couple updates that I made tonight should allow you to chose the ship that you want to load your troops onto, in case you have multiple ships but they are on different sides of the territory. The other change might not have been something that you'd notice, but previously, in a game with more than 2 players it was an issue. The game wouldn't skip over players who had been killed off, so now at the end of the turn, when determining which player will go next, those are only selected from players who still have their Caesar.
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Hey Chris, hopefully you haven't started on the images for the territory pages that we talked about last month. I've got a different idea for how to handle it - a popup box over the map page. I was playing Risk on the iPad a few days ago and got thinking about how that and other video games handle selections, and it just seemed like it would be a more intuitive manner of handling it. I've been working with some JQuery dialog boxes at work and it just seems like those would fit the bill nicely.
By the way, I'm still in the process of updating the combat system. I'm planning to make all three combat systems as separate options for any game - to be chosen at the start of a new game. The original combat system will be called "Hit and Run," then there will be the one I'm working on - "Fight to the Death." I really think this one needs to be done just to get all the code restructured enough to handle the "Choice is Yours" system, which will give the attacker the option to continue a battle or retreat after each round of combat.
Also, after reviewing the combat system from the Eagle Games edition of "Classic" rules, I can definitely say that it won't work for this type of online game play - there is too much to choose for both the attacker and, more importantly, the defender, who is generally not expected to be online at the same time.
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There are now two options for the Battle System. The original version, now called "Hit and Run," which does a single attack for each unit in the attacking legion, then, if the Attacker is still alive but failed to kill off all of the Defender's units, the Attacker will retreat. or the "Fight To Death" system, which does not allow any retreats. In the "Fight To Death" system, each unit will attack and then the attacks will start again at the top of the list, starting with Artillery, then Cavalry, then Infantry. Die rolls will alternate between the attacker and defender until only one side remains.
Hopefully by the end of the year I'll have the next Battle System in place, but until then, I hope you'll enjoy this one.