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Empire Allegro 2
kdevil
Member #1,075
March 2001
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After quite a while, I finally have a very-playable-but-certainly-not-finished version of Empire Allegro 2:

EmpAlleg2 0.5 (4.3 MB)
without the title music (2.1 MB)

There's still a few more things I want to add, but its mostly done at this point code-wise.

So...
Any questions? Comments? Constructive Criticism? Insults?

Incidentally, I need to find out how well the game works on slower computers. All I know is that it should definitely run faster than the last version of Empire Allegro Advance.

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"I am the Black Mage! I casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down!"

Krzysztof Kluczek
Member #4,191
January 2004
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Quote:

Any questions?

What is Empire Allegro? And where are screenshots? :)

kazzmir
Member #1,786
December 2001
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Does it come with source? If so, could you say that explicitly so I dont have to figure it out for myself.

kdevil
Member #1,075
March 2001
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Wow, way for me to omit some basic information.

Anyway:
Empire Allegro is an Advance Wars type game (turn-based strategy, capture buildings, deploy units, make said units attack the enemy, etc.)

It comes with source, and here's some screenshots:

4-player game

Choose a unit to deploy

The title screen

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"I am the Black Mage! I casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down!"

Gnatinator
Member #2,330
May 2002
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I tried to play but the game bugged as it entered an endless loop. When my bomber was bombing the screen started to shake and just stayed shaking forever :(

Also, how does the rapid fire work? Im using artillery, but am only able to fire once.

Apart from that bug it is pretty fun. I wish I had some human opponents, maybe a networking feature could be included in a future version ? ;)

I like the 'bad guy' co's in the missions ;)

kdevil
Member #1,075
March 2001
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Hmm, I've never encountered an infinite loop. From the sound of it there's something wrong involving scrolling. If the last time you played was when that bug happened, can you attach the saves/gamedebug.sav file?

Rapid fire gives a 75% chance of the unit firing twice, so you were just unlucky that time.

I should make an effort to include networking, since it's been mentioned several times now. The problem is that I have absolutely no idea how to do it. When I get some time over the summer I'll have to start looking at some networking tutorials.

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"I am the Black Mage! I casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down!"

Gnatinator
Member #2,330
May 2002
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Quote:

Hmm, I've never encountered an infinite loop. From the sound of it there's something wrong involving scrolling. If the last time you played was when that bug happened, can you attach the saves/gamedebug.sav file?

Sorry man, thats long gone :P

Quote:

I should make an effort to include networking, since it's been mentioned several times now. The problem is that I have absolutely no idea how to do it. When I get some time over the summer I'll have to start looking at some networking tutorials.

Cool :)

juvinious
Member #5,145
October 2004
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Same happened to me here. I had to kill the process.
As soon as one of my units got destroyed it exited the battle scene and the screen commenced 'a' shaking.
This was playing against the computer in a skirmish.
But all in all, it's a nice game, I enjoy playing advanced wars so this is a pretty cool clone of it. Keep up the good work.
Oh and no debug save file was generated.

__________________________________________
Paintown

Eradicor
Member #2,992
December 2002
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IIRC you had in first empire allegro Avatars from allegro.cc .. If you are looking for evil empire.. Choose me. :D What could be better than Owet softwares to play the part of Evil. :P

Ok. ok... just remembering the past.

[EDIT] Oh.. almost forgot. Couldnt even download EA2.

| Visit The site |
{Creating realms from dreams since 1995}

kdevil
Member #1,075
March 2001
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Quote:

Oh and no debug save file was generated.

Wha? It should be saving to the debug save file at the beginning of each turn.

Anyway, if it starts shaking like that again, pressing Control-B will make the game exit.

I've tried to reproduce the problem, but no luck so far...

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"I am the Black Mage! I casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down!"

Kanzure
Member #3,669
July 2003
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Are you the brilliant artist behind the game?

Karadoc ~~
Member #2,749
September 2002
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Well this version actually runs on my computer! (PIII 550MHz. It was unable to run the previous version of EAA.) It works well and plays well, except for this:

Quote:

I tried to play but the game bugged as it entered an endless loop. When my bomber was bombing the screen started to shake and just stayed shaking forever

I also had this happen. But for me it was when I shot down an enemy helicopter with my missiles.
I could send you the debug save file, but I tried it and it didn't happen the second time; so I don't think the save file will help you.

[edit]
It happens a lot. The game is almost unplayable because of this bug. I've wasted a heap of time on the second mission, just from having to reload the save all the time. I suspect that it is something to do with the screen centering on a unit to show it exploding. It always happens when I have destroyed an enemy unit, and it never happens when the enemy destroys my units.

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kdevil
Member #1,075
March 2001
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Glad to hear it's working on older computers now, but that bug is getting frustrating, even more so because I haven't run across it.

Quote:

I could send you the debug save file, but I tried it and it didn't happen the second time

Aaargh, that's the worst kind of bug.

Edit: Fixed! The fixed exe can be downloaded on its own here.

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"I am the Black Mage! I casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down!"

Karadoc ~~
Member #2,749
September 2002
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Out of interest, was I right that it was to do with trying to centre the screen on the destroyed unit?
I figured that it was like because it never happened on maps that fit entirely on one screen and it never happened when it was the AIs turn. The screen was shaking, but there is no screen-shake in the usual 'destroy unit' effect. -> must be trying to centre the screen.

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kdevil
Member #1,075
March 2001
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Yes, but it was also because of the difference between the scroll speed of things like scrolling to explosions and the normal scroll speed that's set in the options menu.

If you've scrolled, say, a quarter of a tile and there's an explosion, it tries to center on that explosion. But the scroll increment the AI uses is half a tile, so it would keep bouncing back and forth between 1/4 tiles away and -1/4 tiles away from the target location.

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"I am the Black Mage! I casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down!"

juvinious
Member #5,145
October 2004
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Ah man, I was in the middle of a 2 and half hour skirmish when an error happened. :(
I attached a screenshot. No debug file this time either, plus I was using the newest exe you uploaded 3 posts back. I should have saved.
The system works really well and the computer is quite a challenge.
However there was one thing I noticed:
When I move a unit to a new location and then cancel, it expends fuel regardless of the cancel.
Anyhow I'm having fun playing it, keep up the good work. Hopefully you can use X-G's grafx in the next release. ;D

[edit]
Oops, forgot the screenshot. :P

__________________________________________
Paintown

kdevil
Member #1,075
March 2001
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Quote:

When I move a unit to a new location and then cancel, it expends fuel regardless of the cancel.

Actually, that's intentional.

As for the crash, was it during your turn or an AI turn? That will help narrow things down a bit.

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"I am the Black Mage! I casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down!"

BAF
Member #2,981
December 2002
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As for learning networking, I highly reccommend Beej's Guide to Network Programming. I learned from the free online copy.

Evert
Member #794
November 2000
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Quote:

I should make an effort to include networking, since it's been mentioned several times now. The problem is that I have absolutely no idea how to do it.

You can have a look how I did it in my Carcassonne game if you think it helps. For a turn-based game, the basic method I use there should be fine. I don't know how it fares in a real-time situation, but it will need some modification at least to resolve conflicts (like who moves first).

Basically, what I did is encapsulate all (well, nearly all) changes in game-state variables in a messaging system. Local and network games both use the same underlying API for dispatching messages and the same message interpreter. The only difference is that messages are interpreted immediately in a local game, and send off to the server in a network game. The server interprets incoming messages (because the server is just anotherplayer) and passes them on to the clients, clients interpret messages when they receive them. Network updates are done at regular intervals.

I'm sure it can be improved, but for me this works well for now. My underlying code uses libnet, but it's hidden behind a wrapper (yup, a wrapper around libnet, which is a wrapper about plain sockets) and should be fairly independent of whatever underlying networking code is plugged in. I had planned to port to HawkNL as well, but I don't think I'll bother.

I should note that I know next to nothing about network programming: I looked at some libnet examples and just started programming.

amarillion
Member #940
January 2001
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I got another bug while playing "big island" - after capturing the green base, two green units remained on the map. They didn't do anything, but I had to kill them to get through.

Oh and please make the enemy AI a little bit smarter. Often units attack without any chance of winning (e.g. an infantry with power 2 attacks a recon with power 8, the infantry is destroyed without doing damage). Also, one time I could capture an enemy HQ while a nearby md tank went on to attack somewhere else. Preventing enemies from capturing the HQ should be absolute priority.

Other than that, nice game. Very true to the original, and I can't wait for networked play.

Don Freeman
Member #5,110
October 2004
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I've noticed that after setting the screen options to 640x480x32 fullscreeen and starting the game again, the screen flashes like crazy and all the colors look screwy. Also, I saved my game and it's not in the list...

--
"Everyone tells me I should forget about you, you don’t deserve me. They’re right, you don’t deserve me, but I deserve you."
"It’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don’t say it."

kdevil
Member #1,075
March 2001
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Quote:

after capturing the green base, two green units remained on the map

Okay, that problem's fixed now. A static int wasn't being reset.

Quote:

after setting the screen options to 640x480x32 fullscreeen and starting the game again, the screen flashes like crazy and all the colors look screwy

That's fixed too, I was stupidly creating some bitmaps before setting the color depth.

I'm not sure what the problem is with saving games. Does the save file actually exist in the saves folder? Anyway, try again with this new exe.

Also, making the AI less suicidal is now on the to-do list.

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"I am the Black Mage! I casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down!"

Hrvoje Ban
Member #4,537
April 2004
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Can you add support for more resolutions? I'm running on 1024x768 so 640x480 is to small and 1280x960 to big for me. This is also problem for LCD monitors.

amarillion
Member #940
January 2001
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Another note, I was looking for an option to make movement go faster and turn animations off like you can do on the GBA version. Is there such an option? I would really like to have it, animations are nice at first but can get very repetetive and advanced players would rather turn them off I think.

kdevil
Member #1,075
March 2001
avatar

There isn't an option to speed things up like that yet, but it's something I'll be sure to add.

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"I am the Black Mage! I casts the spells that makes the peoples fall down!"

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