Xplorers == Caravel

[methius]

Current Version Screenshot:


Project code name:
Xplorers, now named Caravel

Group members:

Gijs-Jan Roelofs - Methius

Group captain:

Gijs-Jan Roelofs - Methius

Briefly describe your project:
Xplorers is a hexagonal tile based board game in which planning, trade and luck play a vital role.
Released as a open-source game centered around moddability and a hybrid form of the Game Oriented Component System.

Updates will be done on a bi-weekly basis (or more as the developer sees fit), with source commits to a open repository.

Game mechanics will feature:

• A dynamic market in which resources change value depending on a multitude of variables.
• Multitude of playing styles, one of which where the primary effect of dice is negated.
• Actual strategy in which players control small parts of armies. (Opposed to ...)

Benefit to Ardor3D community:
This project will be designed as a LGPL library, so open source, centered around moddability.
Every main gameplay aspect will be designed to be interchangeable, and if possible loads from xml resources.
Creating a nice A+ game as a open-source game for the android, acompanied with good support from the developer will give the Android community a good first impression of Ardor3D.
The developer has extensive knowledge of Android development, and owns and develops for both the Nexus One and HTC Hero.
Provide a open-source, well documented (source & diary) implementation of a game which has good API design in mind.

The final game will be released in a free version with a small campaign, single- and multiplayer support against rudimentary AI's.
Players can then buy several campaigns, bundled with more advanced AI's.

The game will then be used to gather information about playstyles to enable research into multi-agent AI.

Furthermore,
the main developer is head of a programmer group which produces Android games, located in the Netherlands.
After succesfull completion of this game, he will introduce the Ardor3D engine to the rest of the projects, bringing a maximum of 3 Triple-A games to the community in short notice.

Project license:
The main game library will be licensed under LGPL.
Further campaigns will be licensed under a closed source license.
To specify: the game would be freely downloadable with a simple campaign, and multiplayer support.

Schedule and details of weekly/biweekly milestones (be specific!):
(Under Game Mechanics fall: Dice Mechanics / Trade Mechanics / Event Mechanics / Build Mechanics etc)

Week 24 - Model Design, and basic game layout

Week 25 - Game board architecture (; to be used datastructures)

Week 26 - Game Mechanics layout

Week 27 - Basic Game Mechanics implementation

Week 28 - Hiatus (Vacation from 14th)

Week 29 - Hiatus (Vacation till 21th)

Week 30 - Ardor 3D Model Implementation

Week 31 - Ardor3D Model & UI Implementation

Week 32 - Ardor3D Model & UI Implementation

Week 33 - Simple AI implementation (preset)

Week 34 - Multiplayer alpha (3G)

Week 35 - Multiplayer alpha (WiFi || Bluetooth)

Week 36 - Basic Campaign

Week 37 - Basic Campaign

Week 38 - Beta presentation

[consiliens]

Benefit to Ardor3D community:
This project will be designed as a LGPL library, with open source, centered around moddability.

Will you be developing the library in an open repository (instead of developing in secret and then publishing the code at the end)? If so I'm willing to try using your library instead of developing yet another tile library.

[methius]

I'll try to maintain a blog about development, and use a open repository for the source. Gj

[methius]

Updated

[MrCoder]

nice!

[methius]

Updates!

Our first working Android Screenshot!



Scene is running at a steady 30fps (Nexus One, Android 2.1), with around 10.000 verts.
There are some culling / ordering issues however .

Furthermore:

Look forward to a complete blog and accompanying wiki in the next 3 days!

[MrCoder]

Awesome!

[MikaelB]

It looks stunning ! Keep going that way

[renanse]

very cool, nice work! Looking forward to seeing the blog and hearing more.

[methius]

Latest update:

• Correct Lighting
• 2 Layer animated low-poly water (looks nice animated, not-so-good in screenshot)
• Game Mechanics
• Board buildup
• Gantt Chart

My gripes so far:

• Ardor3D is not documented well at the moment. (Considering it's 0.7, this is understandable)
• Android does not support Quads, so Ardor3D-UI does not work.
• Performance is now in the 20-30 fps range, without UI or any other models. Compared to some other games on Android (Raging Thunder 2, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjNgJTCUyEU), this is already on the low side.
• I am having culling/ordering & ZBuffer issues. Transparency on some of the trees does not blend with the model beneath it, but directly with the background. (Which should be fixed with Transparancy render bucket)

I am actively keeping a document with all my findings on Ardor3D, document-wise, and intend to update the wiki where necessary to help other people avoid certain pitfalls.
I started this with copying the document outlining Ardor3D from the Trac to the wiki.

Also, with JMonkeyEngine I could BatchGeometryBuffer the tiles of a same type. So far, the best I've come up with is SceneCopier.makeCopy( spatial, new SharedCopyLogic()), and I haven't found any way to speed up things so far.

Although this might seem a negative-tinged post, I'm very positive about the overall experience so far. Especially considering this is a pre-alpha!