From: ap@jyu.fi (Patric Aalto)
Subject: Re: SpaceGame routines
Organization: University of Jyvaskyla, Finland
Date: Fri, 14 Aug 1992 06:06:19 GMT

In article <BsxK0C.JnH@news.cso.uiuc.edu> tmkk@uiuc.edu (Khan) writes:
>>I am coding a game, called 'LineWars II',
>Still working on that one, huh? How many years has it been? ;-)

Well, two years now to be exact. What are you smiling at! :-) I'm in no
hurry, as I want to make the best 3-D space game ever made. (I'm not sure
if I should add a smiley here, as I am half-serious.) I am pretty satisfied
with the low-level stuff, now I just need to make the game playable. :-)

>>1) What should happen when the player's ship gets destroyed? I want the game
>>   end only after all the enemy ships or all friendly ships are destroyed.
>Well, you can let the game play itself out (pretty boring, since all the
>human gets to do is watch). Or you can reincarnate the human player. Why
>don't you want the game to end when all human players have been
>destroyed?

Yes, letting the game play itself out is not a very good solution, I would
think. Currently I sort of reincarnate the human player (he gets to control
the next friendly ship launched from the starbase), but I have also thought
about letting the human player control whichever friendly ship he wishes.
A sort of remote-control system. The reason for not ending the game when the
human-controlled ship is destroyed, is simply the fact that sometimes all
nine enemy ships might decide to attack the one human ship, in which case
the human-controlled ship will be destroyed before the player has time to
press fire-button down.

>>3) Should the player's ship be stronger/faster/whatever, or equal to the
>>   other ships? Currently it is equal.
>I think they should start out equal, but as game play progresses they
>might be able to enhance their ships' capabilities. For example, if you
>land on Planet Xargathia, the engineers there can install a faster drive
>system for your ship. Something like that.

Good, that's what I have been thinking, too. I might be on the right track.

>>4) As I am planning to add LAN support, how should I handle players that
>>   pop in in the middle of on-going battle?
>That's a tough one to support. The simple solution is to make all
>players start at about the same time. The first person to start the game
>on the network becomes the "master" machine.

Hmm.. Perhaps I will use this simple solution, then, at least for the time
being. 

>There are two basic ways to implement multimachine games: the
>peer-to-peer model (which LineWars uses) and the Client/Server model.

Yes, I know. I think I will still use peer-to-peer model, as I know how
it works.

>In a graphics-intensive game, the price of allowing a player to join at
>any point during the game is pretty high. BTW, if you're supporting
>multimachine gaming via serial links, how do you intend to support
>"adding a player at any time" capability with machines connected via
>serial ports?

I was thinking mainly the LAN support mode. I am planning to let the game
have several gaming modes. One would be a single-play (that's all the
game currently has), in which the player has a starbase and nine fighters,
and he should destroy the computer-controlled enemy base and 9 fighters.
(I like the ability to be in the middle of a dogfight between 18 ships.
That's fun, lot's of action!) The second game-mode is a duel between two
players connected by serial links (as in the original LineWars). Then I
want to have a multi-player mode using LAN, and then a campaign-mode.
I have coded the RS-support so that it can support two COM ports at the
same time, but I have not yet decided if I will include RS-port support
with the LAN support into the multi-player mode.

Patrick Aalto
ap@tukki.jyu.fi
Newsgroups: rec.games.programmer