Romewars

[Aaron_]

Hi All,

Thought I'd drop a quick thread on here to let everyone know about a little game project I've started working on.

I own my own business and whilst things have been a little quite here in the U.K. due to the lockdown I have found the time to start developing games again. I've always been a big fan of Total War and play the games regularly - which has always had me wanting to build a game based loosely around the concept of what total war offers.... so around a week ago I started developing Romewars.

The game is planned to be set within the end of the roman empire, and now tribes (clans) have started to set-up within the empire to fight for control of the empire.

The main aspects of the game is to build yourself an army better than everyone else's, with a strong emphasis on building clans to create strength in unity. Some of the core functionality currently includes:

• Armies: The ability to recruit soldiers to your army, costing silver and taking time. You have a barracks which has a limit on troops to be recruited and can be upgraded.
• Clans: The ability to create a clan, join a clan, and then other things like clan banks which will be the only way for players to store their cash safe from attacks, clan wars for clans to go to war against each other and destroy the other clan, Clan alliances which will host a bunch of benefits such as trade agreements to gain income etc.
• Daily Tasks: Daily missions to be completed for a reward and then your standard missions you see in most games to earn experience, income etc.... just a little something to keep people coming back.
• Spies: Ability to spy on players to see their stats/armies, chance of spies failing/being killed, ability to upgrade spies
• Research: The ability to research new things and improvements, unlocking new soldier types, improving income from missions, taking less time of recruitments etc.
• Battles: Attacking other players and pitting your armies against each other

One thing I'm unsure of is how complexed to make the game for launch, I don't want to spend a whole bunch of time developing a really complexed game which no-one might play but also don't want to create something that's not feature rich enough that people won't want to play it. Some other pieces of functionality I am considering adding pre-release include:

• Adding the ability to bring clan members into your battles to bolster your forces and unite your armies in one battle.
• Clan own regions, allowing clans to fight for and own regions for benefits.
• The ability to own and upgrade a village, building buildings to bring you benefits as you play (new toops, more income etc.)

The game is built from scratch using Symfony, I've already created a lot of the core functionality (Armies, Recruiting, Notifications, Messaging, Profiles etc.) so I am hoping to have the game ready for a beta stage within the next week or two depending on how complexed I decide to make the launch functionality. The design will be a very basic bootstrap template, I'm purley a back-end developer and posses very little front-end skills/creativity... if anyone is interested in pitching in with this please let me know!

It would be great to hear what you guys think, if you've played total war what functionality would you want to see in a text-based version and just what ideas you have in general around what can be done to make this something exciting and fun to play!

Regards,

Aaron

 

 

 

So after a bit of digging through my old emails I found a game template I purchased back in 2016! It suits the purpose of the game and fits the theme, although I'm unsure if I sacrifice mobile functionality for a nice looking theme? I've attached a screenshot below.

30/03/2020 Update:

I thought it might be cool to start a daily log at the end of each day to update on progress. 

So, after a little thought I’ve decided to add villages. This will make some of the current functionality redundant and require some re-thought... but should bring a much better experience to the game.

Players will get a village on registration, they can then build buildings within their village to increase defence, create income, house more soldiers and unlock more soldier types.

The messaging system is now fully complete and working with the ability to message players and view messages. 
 

Tomorrow I plan to start developing the functionality for the villages and remove and redundant functionality that will no longer be needed.

Edited March 31, 2020 by Aaron_

[Aaron_]

31/03/2020 update:

Started working on the village functionality. Villages will consist of:

- Population: Growing population to earn taxes from

- Public Order: Happiness of population (slows growth, can cause revolt etc.)

- Sanitation: Cleanliness it the city, can result in disease spread etc.

- Garrisoned Troops: additional defensive units

- Buildings: Different types for different benefits

- Religion: Different religions to be selected for different benefits 

[URBANZ]

looks very nice, remember this theme when peter made it and thought i looks good  back then. hopefully the project works out for you will definitely check it out when you release it.

Need any help with making it mobile let me know definitely could make the layout responsive still.

[Aaron_]

6 hours ago, urbanmafia said:

looks very nice, remember this theme when peter made it and thought i looks good  back then. hopefully the project works out for you will definitely check it out when you release it.

Need any help with making it mobile let me know definitely could make the layout responsive still.

Thank You! I'll certainly be in touch if I need any help!

[Dave]

This sounds awesome! I like a different spin on a text based game which doesn't follow the standard mafia style games. 

You could make that design responsive, it'd just be rather interesting where you have to move everything. It's a nice layout, one of Peter's best! However, I'd be concerned at how tall the header area is which means the content is really far down the page which would be even worse when trying to make it responsive.

I find the best way to do responsive is you just drop most of the fluff images for background images / colors. If you want any help I'll be happy to give some pointers.

Excited to see the beta!

[Aaron_]

1 hour ago, Dave said:

This sounds awesome! I like a different spin on a text based game which doesn't follow the standard mafia style games. 

You could make that design responsive, it'd just be rather interesting where you have to move everything. It's a nice layout, one of Peter's best! However, I'd be concerned at how tall the header area is which means the content is really far down the page which would be even worse when trying to make it responsive.

I find the best way to do responsive is you just drop most of the fluff images for background images / colors. If you want any help I'll be happy to give some pointers.

Excited to see the beta!

I'm hoping that it does turn out to be something a little more unique than what's already out there, but the main goal is just to create something that I'd love to play, and hope that a few other people out there have similar interests to me.

 

I'll certainly take you up on that offer, frustratingly I have a really cool logo which I paid some good money for a while back so I'm not sure whether to go with the layout Peter has created or to pay someone to create something around the logo.

[Dave]

2 hours ago, Aaron_ said:

I'm hoping that it does turn out to be something a little more unique than what's already out there, but the main goal is just to create something that I'd love to play, and hope that a few other people out there have similar interests to me.

 

I'll certainly take you up on that offer, frustratingly I have a really cool logo which I paid some good money for a while back so I'm not sure whether to go with the layout Peter has created or to pay someone to create something around the logo.

I feel like you've gotta share the logo now!

[MNG]

I'm actually working on this theme as well with the mccode engine, really love the layout. I couldn't find an idea on how to make the theme.

[Aaron_]

3 hours ago, Dave said:

I feel like you've gotta share the logo now!

I've attached the logo. I've posted it in here a few years back when I planned on making the game but never got far with completing it. The name fits the theme that I am going for better and I really like the logo

 

1 hour ago, MNG said:

I'm actually working on this theme as well with the mccode engine, really love the layout. I couldn't find an idea on how to make the theme.

Sounds great, how are you getting on? Would be great to hear more about the project!

01/04/2020 Update:

After banging my head against a wall due to a entity relationship issue with the villages I decided to take a break from it and focus on another part of functionality, so I decided to start tackling the clans.

Ability to create, request to join, approve join requests and view clan(s) is now all complete. 

Tomorrow I plan to continue completing the clan functionality.

At the moment I’m keeping everything top level and ensuring functionality is complete before going back over and fixing the finer details around content etc. 

[Dave]

That logo is pretty cool! It might work with your layout, I'm unsure.

GameSiteTemplates has some awesome templates that might suite your logo better but would probably need some tweaks to fit your game: https://www.gamesitetemplates.com/photoshop-templates/fantasy/medieval.html

[Dayo]

Looking very good, as dave said you can make any layout responsive, you just have to focus on what is important and what isnt.

[Aaron_]

16 hours ago, Dave said:

That logo is pretty cool! It might work with your layout, I'm unsure.

GameSiteTemplates has some awesome templates that might suite your logo better but would probably need some tweaks to fit your game: https://www.gamesitetemplates.com/photoshop-templates/fantasy/medieval.html

Perfect! Thanks for this, I’ll be sure to check the site out. 
 

9 hours ago, Dayo said:

Looking very good, as dave said you can make any layout responsive, you just have to focus on what is important and what isnt.

Thank you, and not with my poor front-end skills! Haha. 

For now I’m just going to focus on getting the functionality complete and then once I’m done I can start thinking about the layout and potentially looking at hiring someone... so if there are any designers out there who want to provide me with a  quote I’ll consider them in the next few weeks!

 

02/04/2020 Update:

Found the relationship issue I was facing with the entities that halted my progress with the villages and fixed it - so looking forward to being able to start completing the core functionality for the villages which will be the most complexed part of the game.

I’ve also made further progress with the Clans, they’re around 33% complete now. However I’ll likely leave some of the functionality for post-beta as it’s not essential for launch. 

[Aventro]

Looking forward to following your progress! Good luck. And yeah, that logo is neat 🙂

[Aaron_]

03/04/2020 Update: 

More progress made on Villages. Database tables now fully set-up. Ability to start building buildings in your village nearly complete, just need to finalise adding the effects of the buildings onto your village. 

Tomorrow I plan to make further progress with villages and share some screenshots to show people some of the progress.

I’m a little behind where I wanted to be for the week but should hopefully get some good development time in over the weekend. 

Some really good progress made on Villages today, buildings now in place with the cron functionality set-up to run down the timing clock and execute the benefits of the building once the building has been complete. I'd also though I'd share some screenshots of progress thus far. Obviously they don't look amazing but hopefully show some of the progress that's been made so far!

[Dayo]

Have you thought about using time stamps rather then crons, it can be a lot more flexible and strain your server less

[Aaron_]

7 hours ago, Dayo said:

Have you thought about using time stamps rather then crons, it can be a lot more flexible and strain your server less

I haven't, for now crons provide a simple and effective way for me to handle time-based tasks. I will certainly be looking into ways to improve my code once the project goes into BETA though

04/04/2020 Updates:

More good progress made on Villages, just need to finalise the Religion (75% done). public order and daily income functionality and then villages are ready for BETA testing. 

Tomorrow I plan on finalising villages and potentially making more progress on the clans. 

[Aaron_]

05/04/2020 Update:

Another day, another update! Today I created a simple forum system which is now fully functional and working. I also made further improvements to the Villages, finalised the Religions and fixed some UX issues around how already built functions worked. 

I’ve also started working on a simple clan messaging system to allow players to chat within their clans. 
 

I’ve now officially passed the 50% mark and only have one large piece of work left which is the battle system... I’ve still not quite figured out the best way for this to work for the users, any ideas would be much appreciated!

[Dave]

1 hour ago, Aaron_ said:

I’ve now officially passed the 50% mark and only have one large piece of work left which is the battle system... I’ve still not quite figured out the best way for this to work for the users, any ideas would be much appreciated!

Damn you're working quickly. Super excited to see it once it's ready for people to register 🙂

[Aaron_]

13 hours ago, Dave said:

Damn you're working quickly. Super excited to see it once it's ready for people to register 🙂

Haha! I’ve not done any major bug testing yet so I’m sure that’ll un-earth some issues that’ll put a spanner in the works!

06/04/2020:

No development updates today as I’ve had a busy day with work, I have however been thinking more about how the attacks system will work, as I want it to be more than attack... you won/lost.

I’m thinking that a turn based system will be best. Your troops will be outlined against their troops, and then you can select which troop attacks which in a turn based style... so you can select troop A to attack troop B and then they select troop C to attack troop A and so on. 

I’m also going to setup troop types with strengths and weaknesses... so Archers will benefit against Melee troops, Cavalry will benefit against Archers etc. 

This will then play into your strategy when managing a battle, so you’ll have your cavalry attack their archers because they’ll have bonus damage agains that unit and be more likely to destroy them with minimum damage. 

The only problem with this is how the CPU makes it’s picks for the defending user, I’m thinking it just makes the best decision for the user automatically, but worried this provides too much of a benefit for the defending users. 

[Aaron_]

07/04/2020:

I've officially started on the attack system and made some really good progress. As I mentioned in yesterday's update I have decided to go with a turn-based system in which you pit troops against troops. It currently allows you to select a troop you want to attack and then runs through the entire battle with those two units until one runs out of health and then that unit will be removed from the battle and the winning unit will return back into the lineup with it's diminished health, this will then continue until one army has been fully wiped out, or the attacking unit withdraws.

I've attached a screenshot which shows how this currently looks, as you can see I attacked unit 4 with unit 2 and unit 2 won. As I attacked I get the first turn, the next turn (not developed yet) will be automated and will be the CPU managing the defending army to complete a turn.

Tomorrow I plan on completing the rest of the battle so that you can run through the entire process until the battle is complete. I also plan on adding an auto-complete button which will just run through the full battle for you.

 

Edited April 7, 2020 by Aaron_

[Aaron_]

09/04/2020 Update:

No update yesterday - I took the day off! 

Today I’ve got the full play by play system on battling complete, and some more progress on the UX side for it. Really happy with how it’s worker out and think it’ll be an enjoyable part of the game for players.

Tomorrow I plan on cleaning up the final parts of the battle system, detecting that’s the battle has ended, providing a results page, adding full auto sim and providing a results page. I’ll probably also move it to AJAX - which should make for a much better UX.

10/04/2020 Update:

Great progress made today, I've been able to put in a lot of time today and this means I've been able to get through a lot! The clans are now complete and the battle system is ready. I've also implemented a level'ing system.

I have three core pieces of functionality left and then I'm going to open Alpha testing to a few select people as I think a pre-beta test from some outside players would benefit massively! I'll be ready for the Alpha testing on Monday, so if anyone is interested please drop me a DM and as I'll be able to sort you with access.

[Aaron_]

12/04/2020 Update:

I've now implemented a basic spying system into the game. Players can recruit new spies, spies gain experience by successfully spying on players  which allows them to level and spies can fail, be killed or succeed when spying on a player with their success chances based on the level of the spy and the level of the player. So if  a level 1 spy tried to spy on a level 100 player they'd almost certain fail, and have a high chance of dying. I've attached some screenshots to show it in action!

[Aaron_]

Hi all,

So I'm now very nearly ready for the a few people to come and do some very early stage tests on the game. If you are interested please drop me a DM and as soon as it's ready I'll be able to hook you up with access so you can have a play around!

[Sim]

I'm ready to test

 

[MNG]

I would like to test aswell, 🙂