Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

The Campaign Series: Middle East 1948-1985 is a new turn-based, tactical wargame that focuses on conflicts in the Middle East.

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berto
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by berto »


As always, still a work-in-progress.
ORIGINAL: berto

Ta-da!

Image

All buttons (and controls) fully functional and WAD.

No optional niceties yet, such as 3D button effects. Note also: 256 color, otherwise it won't display.

Moving on to the scen type screen next. Then the bigger challenge: the oversized scen select screen.
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by berto »

ORIGINAL: berto

The scenario type dialog:

Image

Two down, one to go. (In this initial round of frontend revamp anyway.)
Note of course that the frontend launcher EXE is no longer fixed, full-screen; rather, it's a windowed EXE just like any other.
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Warhorse »

SWEET!
Mike Amos

Meine Ehre heißt Treue
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by harry_vdk »

ORIGINAL: berto
Note of course that the frontend launcher EXE is no longer fixed, full-screen; rather, it's a windowed EXE just like any other.
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Big Ivan »

ORIGINAL: Warhorse

SWEET!


+1[:)]
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by dox44 »

+1
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by berto »


Best of all:
ORIGINAL: berto

Ta-da!

Image
As with everything, still a work-in-progress of course.

In addition to

[*]frontend EXE now a windowed app (no longer fixed, full-screen)
[*]the much, much expanded scen description box (so that very few scenario descriptions are so lengthy as to require scrolling)
[*]the new "skin"

notice also the

[*]implementation of a new sorting option, sorting by scenario Title

Always, always here.
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by berto »


Credit goes to Crossroads for the redesign, and the artwork. Credit to me for the coding. [;)]
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Crossroads »

... and these can be modded as well, as long as the controls are kept in the same place [:)]
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Big Ivan »

Man that is so cool guys, real sweet!![&o]

Can't wait to see the new updates in action.

Hopefully the Lord willing and the creek don't rise I'll be busy with CSME as winter sets in.

"Another log on the fire and a glass of craft beer, its back to the new CSME!"[:)]
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Deepstuff3725 »

Haha...

Looks great guys. Like the arrangement with the dark green background.

Keep up the good work.
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Crossroads »

ORIGINAL: berto
< --snip-- >

notice also the

[*]implementation of a new sorting option, sorting by scenario Title

Always, always here.

One of my pet peeves! How nice to finally be able to browse the scenario listing sorted by scenario title. For instance, when playing through the Jerusalem 1967 scenarios they are neatly all there now [:)]

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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by DM729 »

This is excellent! Great job as always guys!
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by fritzfarlig »

GREAT WORK !!

what about "bug" in the OOB, I have found some during working with my latest big scenario
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Crossroads »

ORIGINAL: berto


At latest count, over 120 functions in the new Campaign Series (Lua) Event Engine:

So cool, so much more finesse can now be put into scenario design.

For instance, with the Crisis in Sirte scenario "Prelude", what if the Libyan player just decides to vacate Sirte, saving his troops from losses and thus preventing his opponent to gain additional Victory Points for destructing enemy unis? Gamey tactics, even, if Sirte would be such a key port facility to deny the Brits have access to it in later Sirte scenarios.

How about we give him reinforcements, then, should he succesfully hang into Sirte for the first ten turns? Now he'd have a reason to fight tooth and nail to keep the Brits out!

Something like this perhaps? [:)]

-- Early stuff, by the way! The CS Event Engine will be worth both Coder and Developer Diaries in due time, just not quite yet --

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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by dox44 »

now that is a game changer for sure. so is the lua script contained within the .ini scenario file?
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Crossroads »

^^ Note, by the way, how the British player has his Ammo and Arty Ammo levels at 60, compared to 80 for the Libyan player. They both start at 80, so how is this happening?

CS Event Engine, of course. In this test bed, the Brits have their ammo level reduced as the turns go, depicting how difficult it is to supply airborne units in battle.

The player get just to play them, for improvement fun factor I hope! [:)]

Note, also, as a player this is not something you need to worry. It is for the scenario designer to have the what ever events he wishes for to take place in the scenario.

Here's the code snippet to test the gradual reduction of the ammo levels:

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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by Crossroads »

ORIGINAL: casebier

now that is a game changer for sure. so is the lua script contained within the .ini scenario file?

It certainly is a game changer!

Each scenario has its unique lua scripts, in a new scenario file, if the scenario designer so wishes.

In this case:

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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by dox44 »

its gonna make it a whole new game.

great job!
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RE: Sneak Peeks, Coming Attractions, Works-In-Progress

Post by berto »

ORIGINAL: berto

Introducing a new on_* function: on_startup()

on_startup() is run once, at scenario (or save game) load and startup. It has no input parameters.

Here is a test example:

Image

(The function definition for on_next_turn(turn) follows. Note that you would probably want, as in this example, to locate the on_startup() definition at the very beginning of the <scenario>.lua file. You would define on_startup() in your scenario-specific .lua files, not in user.lua. Defining on_startup() in your <scenario>.lua file is not absolutely necessary. The Lua EE will not choke or complain if it doesn't see it.)

With that in place, if you launch the scenario, you would see this:

Image

"Okay," you may be thinking to yourself. "So what?"

Well, what if you have a commander, and you know that counter's trackid? (In this case 363.) (Maybe you know the counter's trackid by inspecting the .scn file.) You can set the (scenario-specific) global value THE_KING (or whatever you name it) to that trackid. Thereafter, you don't need to reference the trackid; you could instead reference its label. For instance:

Image

(You might note where I have added trackid as one of the on_unit_kill() input parameters. New EXEs with this, also the new on_startup() function, will be released soon.)

Let's try it out ...

... After unit 363 was killed, I saw this:

Image

Then checking the Victory Dialog, I saw this:

Image

(There is another way to set the loss points for this unit so high: in edorg, in the .org file. But this is another way. Doing it this way also lets us apply different special conditions, or perhaps vary the lost EPs according to circumstances or some computed formula.)

Likewise, we could reference VIP in our Lua code. VIP is much more meaningful than the number 1287.

So too THE_CASTLE. On capture/loss of that objective (indeed even if it's not a formal objective), we could trigger something to happen. By using THE_CASTLE in our code, it is more readable and sensible than seeing the "20,55".

We will adopt the convention to have all on_startup() labels be all caps (but it is not mandatory).

on_startup() can be used to

[*]Display a greeting (or whatever) dialog at scenario startup. (Showing at startup only, because sited in on_startup(), guaranteed never to recur.) (In the test example shown above, displaying that message was for demonstration and testing purposes only. Ordinarily one would not show label assignments in this way; on_startup() would just do them silently.)
[*]Set some meaningful value labels.
[*]Do other set-up processing.

You could do these same tasks in the ordinary on_next_turn() function, and guarantee they are only done once by putting an 'if turn == 1' wrapper around things. But doing it in on_startup() is cleaner, and guaranteed to happen only once.

(Note that on_startup() doesn't preclude any global initializations you might otherwise do in your (optional) user.lua file. But any such initializations would apply to all scenarios, since user.lua is general in scope.)
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