Monday, March 10, 2008

[planning] future SoundRTS 1.0 beta 10a (unstable)

The main change of the beta 10a will be:
- improved population limit and faster multiplayer games; requires a big architecture change

The following changes, initially included in the beta 9i, will be in the beta 10a:
- now the player can invite the aggressive computer even if he has not completed the single player campaign
- map making: removed old single player example map
- map making: single player campaigns (victory unlocks the next chapter)
- map making: mission chapters (in a campaign)
- map making: custom sounds (in a campaign)
- map making: cut scene chapters (in a campaign)
- map making: introduction cut scene (in a mission) (for example: a briefing)
- map making: cut_scene (play a cut scene during a mission)
- added a "victory, do you want to continue?" menu and a "defeat, do you want to restart?" menu after a single player chapter of a campaign
- change: press F9 instead of F12 to check the objectives
- change: press F11 instead of F9 to check the players (in a multiplayer game)
- new: press control + tab to cycle through woods, gold mines and meadows
- map making: several objectives (in a mission); can be added during a mission
- map making: new trigger condition: has_entered (example: "has_entered b2" is true when the player enters b2)
- removed the "Ctrl + F6: wait for combat sounds" option
- fixed a bug where the player couldn't always build after a game is restored
- map making: new trigger action: add units in a square (for example: reinforcements)

The following changes will probably be in the beta 10b or later:
- easier way to start multiplayer games
- a new single player map illustrating the new map making features
- map making: custom units (for example: a hero unit, or special units)

The following changes are planned for after the beta 10:
- add lesson 1 of a very easy in-game tutorial (doing many things in the same square first)
- add scout towers, mutable to arrow-throwing towers or to cannon towers
- catapults can attack units in adjacent squares but only if the unit is seen, but cannot attack units in the same square
- add limited persistence of enemy units in fog of war
- add lessons for the tutorial
- the player can select allied computers or not
- the players can ally during a multiplayer game
- the player can choose between more than one race
- a player can replay and examine a recorded multiplayer game
- an observer can examine a multiplayer game being played
- difficulty levels?

19 comments:

Shadow said...

I have to say, this game is going to easily take a place in the top audio gmaes out there.
I can't wait for the next release!

Anonymous said...

yes, that's my opinion, too. The game is the best I've ever played. When will the next version be ready?
I am very excited about it.

SoundMUD said...

Thanks!

The next version will be released in less than 2 weeks, I hope.

Anonymous said...

Is it possible to play soundRTS in a Lan?

SoundMUD said...

Yes, to play in a Lan, start a private server. The other players will choose multiplayer/enter the ip address of the server, then they must enter the local IP address of the server.

Anonymous said...

will this new single player map be only an example or will the map be included into the game menu
and be playable?

SoundMUD said...

If I add a new single player map, the map will be included in the game menu. But I might simply modify an existing map, for example merging mission 2 and mission 3 into one mission; I don't know yet.

Anonymous said...

I was just wondering if there are any plans to add ships to the game? Would add a new level of strategy to the game if you could transport your troops across water to get to your enemy's base and the like, could make making missions more interesting. Especially since yo'd have to have ships around to help guard the troop transports. Would also put in a new way to gain gold, oil refineries. Also, do you have any plans to make archers and knights upgradable? Knights to paladins could be your healers rather than mages, and archers to rangers would just give them more damage, range, armor and the like. If I remember right from my warcraft II days. And my final question, do you have any plans to gives mages spells? For example, an area attacking blizard or death and decay spell? Could be useful in dispursing groups of enemies. Thanks.

SoundMUD said...

I can't do this now, but later, probably.
About spells with area of effect, I've been thinking about it. Maybe the entire square would be the area. Or maybe passive abilities like defensive aura, offensive aura.

Anonymous said...

+1 to add water areas in maps. But the problem is that the current units / buildings and the game logic may change to balance correctly. Difficult to modify when that wasn't planed at the beginning.

Another future idea could be that one :
Building walls, to improove base defense, and making catapults or archers mor efficient (they can shot over walls).

The current most important problem with SoundRTS is that you don't have enough possibilities. You reach very early the developement limit. (What can you do once all upgrades have been done, except produce more and more units in a row ?).

I find important to add more upgrades / units / buildings, to multiply the possible game tactics.

Of course it is a lot of work. If SoundRTS wasn't in python, I had probabely proposed to help programming.

Anonymous said...

do you know when the new version will be released?

Anonymous said...

When will be the next version?,

SoundMUD said...

The main design choice that influences the evolutions is the fact that the game world is made up of squares that are isolated and only linked by paths (like rooms and doors). I don't want to give up this choice now because it probably simplifies the gameplay, even if it seems complicated and less satisfying from the simulationist point of view.

The thing that will have to change is the way communications are done in multiplayer games: it is slow and I have to limit the population too much and it is not fun. This implies big changes and must be done as soon as possible because each new feature make this change more and more difficult.

SoundMUD said...

About the next version, I have decided to begin the big changes that will make the multiplayer games faster.

I don't know if I will succeed or how many time it will take.

Anonymous said...

I look forward to the multiplayer games being faster. Take as long as you need, but please try to make the multiplayer games faster. This is a feature I would really like. I know that me and my friend’s game play may not be the most exciting of games, but what we tend to do is upgrade any troops or buildings we want. We create the maximum troops is possible on a map and then use both are troops against each other. Once troops of either side are completely killed off the remaining troops go off and destroy the town and wins. A game in multiplayer mode has always taken over an hour to finish simply because we spend 95% of the time building buildings and troops. Part of the slowdown is that we have to wait for the slaves to collect gold. It would be great if we could have everything really fast so that we can build troops quickly within 20 minutes or so and go for the fight. Since the fun of the game is seeing who will win. Also look forward to the feature of improved food population and being able to ally during a multiplayer game since that will make game play in multiplayer mode more dynamic. Keep up the good work. Sound RTS rocks. It’s my favourite game and I’m grateful to you for creating this awesome game. Thanks

Unknown said...

Hi,
I am really excited and looking forward to seeing the new version. It's probably a wonderful decision to start doing the big program architecture changes now, enabling the population limit improval and faster multiplayer games, since the latest beta seems pretty stable and enjoyable. However, maybe we would appreciate, if it's possible, a new beta, including just the changes and improvements you've already implemented. That is, of course, if the entire thing is in a playable state now, considering the necessary big changes you mentioned. Whatever you do and whenever a new release comes out, I'll gladly wait for it, as this game is so much rocking and promising as any game hasn't been in years for the blind community. The future plans proposal looks like something incredible!

SoundMUD said...

Thanks for your support.
I can't easily release an intermediate version. It would contain very few obvious changes anyway, because they are only new possibilities for map makers, and the language is not stable enough.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for such an awesome game. I play for hours at a time. Also, you have inspired me to try and write a game or 2. I would especially like to say thanks for supporting Linux. After discovering Soundrts, I did a search to find more games and was amazed at the number of games available and very disappointed to find that 99% of them only work on Windows. In fact, the only 2 that work on Linux that I have found, are Soundrts and AudioQuake. Well actually, AudioQuake is supposed to work but I haven't gotten it to do so yet.
If my game progresses to the point where it is actually ready for release to the public, I plan on adding a chat function. Because different platforms have different synthesizers available, I am thinking of setting a "Voice command string" setting in the options. This will allow players to set their prefered synth for chats and adjust things like speed all at once, a sample would be something like:
espeak -s 390 -v en-us
Which in this case would use Espeak for all chats. Does this sound like a good way to do it? If so, would you consider adding something like that into Soundrts?
Thanks again, this game rocks!

SoundMUD said...

Thank you for your encouraging comment.

About using Text-To-Speech synthesizers, I don't know, especially for a multi-platform, multi-language, game. Using multi-platform, multi-language Text-To-Speech is an ever-evolving, time-consuming, programming maze with no obvious exit. The last time I tried, at least. Examining the source code of NVDA might be helpful.

The use of Skype for chatting requires no programming, for an arguably better result.

The Linux support is an unplanned consequence of the use of prerecorded sounds for the voices (instead of a TTS synthesizer), and of the use of Pygame/SDL. I'm not sure if I would bother to maintain this support if I was to use a TTS. I might go for a Windows-only SAPI solution, then.