Hello,
I would ask if people have interests to start a JME-project like of the Total War series ( http://www.totalwar.com/shogun2/ ) , with 3D action RTS-sort battles, but with the old Shogun(1) tactical-map and draws.
(I think the new series did a bad job with their newer map movement versions)
I’m no JME-pro yet, so it would speed the production of this project, if others would join the team.
Also graphic-folks, 3d modeller would be welcome.
Some eyecandy. Might let you dream how it could look:
Things should be generic as possible, so with other map-data/grapics/3D the themes could be changed easily. Also maybe a more-generic name would be good to find.
Tell me what you think of it.
3 Likes
I think this is a little bit to hard for a hobby-project. The Total-War-mechanisms are really complex monsters.
Maybe it would be better if you focus on the real-time or the turn-bases-mechanics. A cool project could be a basic army AI that is capable to command troops.
this looks really interesting… have you started any on the battle coding yet? the hardest part with that, I would think, is a good LOD system, maybe just start out with a simple 3d model and a sprite for far-view, and tweak it from there.
contrary to ceiphern comment, the basics could be archived with a very simple steering AI for the individual units . Use JME node system to create the unit formations and have each unit follow its “formation node” and a quick and simple fighting algorithm for combat between individual units when they are in close proximity
Hey,
I’m actually working on something like this 
Of course I know that it is nigh impossible to complete but it makes fun if you have a goal in front of your eyes. I haven’t really announced anything because most of these hobby projects just die for various reasons and I really planned to just do the world map mechanics and not really try to write the battles.
I call it “openwar” but the name was already taken by a long forgotten and abandoned project so the name became “openwar-temp” on googlecode 
If you like you can check it out by using the JMonkeyplatform. It should just work out of the box.
I even had it at one point to load actual Medieval 2 maps. Looky here:
But now I have a more sophisticated code which gives me more freedom with a lot of stuff. I also want it to be as generic as possible.
In my opinion Rome and Medieval 2 were the best parts. Empire and Napoleon were total desasters and Shogun 2 was a lot better but was absolutely dumbed down for the masses which I hated. So I want it to be more like Medieval 2 or Rome (which I loved the most) 
2 Likes
Hey cool,
after nobody did reply anything after some days, I was not sure if I posted in the correct part of the forum ;).
Very nice that some other folks are on such game-stuff too.
I agree, that to make a full TW-game would be much, especial in the battle-part. The animations and codings would need a lot of work.
But I thought (first?) a less that heavy, more in the way of a board-game (on PC)
, more tactical and drop the action part for later?
Well, after all I have a nearly finished own similar-sort java game working. Like a java version of
→ http://www.hutsellgames.com/civil-war-strategy/
(dont get confused from the different DOS-game look, its sort of TW-predecessor, only in 2d-‘pixel pride’)
My game works generally… (not finished any AI for ships yet) but is not 3D. So I’m porting it to JME.
After all I’m still not happy with my AI-tries. It plays very dump! ;p
I checked for open source infos about tactical-game AIs but did not find much.
(Best might be http://www.ellought.demon.co.uk/dipai/ a ‘diplomacy’-AI)
Ok, anyway. I would like to join with others if you are interested, maybe together we can do things better than seperated?
Dodikles, I will check your link!
Dodikles,
As you see on my first pictures, my game mechanics are done by simple links(‘roads’?) form ‘city’ to ‘city’ (like old Shogun TW (1) and ‘Risiko’ works). That makes programming of a board-game AI much easier.
It might be totally different what you try on a free map. For such you need pathfinding algorithms.
Dont know if JME has such. If not. That might be prgramming-fun pure!
Hey hermetic,
sounds great overall. I would really like to work with someone who’s also fond of TW and I think that it is a good idea to first get the whole worldmap thingy done. Battles would be sweet but are far more involved to get it right IMO. But yeah, if the worldmap works why not try to get the battles done in a fashionable way?
Concerning the map AI: I looked into the TW AI and they do of course pathfinding. But they have a lot of “help”: First the engine determines so-called “choke points” on the map to get pathfinding and general military strategy feasible to calculate. And furthermore the AI gets specific information which region to defend, where to patrol with armies etc. so they cheat a lot by supplementing the AI with scripts Sometimes you see this on the map where the enemy gathers a lot of troops by your border but doesn’t attack because its script does not state that
Right now I’m quite short of time because I will have 7 exams till the end of next month starting next monday :D. But I’m looking forward to it because they are the last stepping stones to my master’s degree yay ^^
Can I play your java game somewhere and have you looked into my project and assessed it?
Dodikles said:
Hey hermetic,
sounds great overall. I would really like to work with someone who's also fond of TW and I think that it is a good idea to first get the whole worldmap thingy done. Battles would be sweet but are far more involved to get it right IMO. But yeah, if the worldmap works why not try to get the battles done in a fashionable way? ;)
Yes, I think the battles are on the other hand not that complicated. Its like checking the stats of the position of the micro-units and computing with a bit random which wins while starting the needed animation-sequence on the battle-model in 3D.
Also there are source for games online where a weighting of a battlemap for AI-decisions and movements are done.
Nothing what is so difficult that it cant be done.
The only problem is the bunch on animations and game models, textures, graphics stuff you need for such a game to look good. Thats the main problem, for non-payed projects I guess.
Concerning the map AI: I looked into the TW AI and they do of course pathfinding. But they have a lot of "help": First the engine determines so-called "choke points" on the map to get pathfinding and general military strategy feasible to calculate. And furthermore the AI gets specific information which region to defend, where to patrol with armies etc. so they cheat a lot by supplementing the AI with scripts ;) Sometimes you see this on the map where the enemy gathers a lot of troops by your border but doesn't attack because its script does not state that ;)
Cool, are those files open readable in MTW2, or did you a de-compile? I would like to learn more of that.
Right now I'm quite short of time because I will have 7 exams till the end of next month starting next monday :D. But I'm looking forward to it because they are the last stepping stones to my master's degree yay ^^
Can I play your java game somewhere and have you looked into my project and assessed it?
Sure, I get sidekicked often, because of RL-jobs too. No probs.
Will upload the 2d version of game if I have some time and DL/check your present code.
By the way, it might be an idea to come with an RTW/MTW2 map editor maybe? That should not that much work. I still dont know a capable campain editor for it, that dont crash all the time (like the french 'rome'-editor, or the 'time'-map-editor).
Regarding the model problem, I guess I can give a hand. I have some code that mimics a model assembly as used in TW. So you have several slightly different meshes, which at runtime will be chosen. The animations can be shared between similar skeletons too. So with minimum modelling you can get a diverse unit look.
Here’s a link to what it does, with abscreen of models from the Tw mod CoWhttp://hub.jmonkeyengine.org/groups/user-code-projects/forum/topic/jme2-ogre-model-assembler/
Hey guys,
@hermetic: Yes, just computing the battle outcome is not a big deal. I even think that the “auto-resolve” of the battles in Rome, for example, was rather simple. I believe that they just compared numbers and did not even take terrain (apart from cities, that is) into account. I was referring to implementing real-time battles with thousands of walking and fighting entities. This puts a lot of tight computional constraints on AI, rendering etc. But yeah, start simple and get complex with time
Before I started my project, I looked alot into the MW2 and Rome files to understand how CA created their maps, put resources and entities on it and basically how all of those world map related things were implemented (to copy them 
). A very good source is http://www.twcenter.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=272 . I also took a lot of info from there. The TW data is stored in *.pack files and you can find the unpacker here, just uploaded it: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Q7RH522R .
To actually build the maps I went the standard way: Photoshop. Maybe CA has a world editor too, but the world maps themselves in TW are stored in multiple *.tgas. One heightmap, one “climate” map, one “fog of war” map, one “feature map”, one “region map” and so forth. It’s not so difficult to draw them really and if you check out my project you will see the example map which I created with Photoshop myself (watch out: programmer’s art ). It takes a bit of tweaking parameters and pixels really but this should be a piece of cake for artists. Actually, all those modders in the TW forum do it this way and they create gorgeous world maps! So I don’t think that an editor is needed (ok, maybe for battle terrains… but we could use the standard JMonkeyplatform terrain editor for this task!).
@ghoust: Wow, your project looks amazing and would be definitely needed from some point on! Have you tried to port it to JME3 yet? Maybe you would also be interested in doing AI? I know some AI algorithms myself but never really implemented anything beyond an influence map and it looks like you have more knowledge than me in this field…
Yes, Dodikles, I know how rome use its maps and regions, did mod some too myself and made a tool, to change the name of city-names which reads strat and regions files, finds cities X,Y positions…
Only on map-files I had to convert .tga by hand in java readable format, in JME there should be no such probs. ;p
Ghoust, sounds very good! Looks like things dont need to be so complicated we first thought.
Anyway I looked for free (human) animation-libraries lately, but did not find one yet.
Guess that would be a good thing for JME. Not always have to refine the wheel, with users have to make ‘walk’, ‘battle’-animations of their own.
Guess commercial companies buy such from stock, they dont make it also.
Atm I am seperating the code from the rest of my project. The source was ported to jme3 last weekend. I will release the source and demo around this weekend.
Ok, source and a webstart demo is available from here http://3d-inferno.com/Jme/#assembler.
Just to make it clear, I’m only sharing my code, but I do not have the time for a second jme project atm. If you need help later on incorporating the model assembler into your project give me a call, I will help, everything else if currently above my limits. But I will keep an eye on your project.
This looks interesting. And I would like to participate in this project. Is there any source e.g. loading world map that can be checked out for playing around? Or any plan regarding to this project?
I am particularly interested in battlefield part, though it is apparently not an easy task. But being lack of game background knowledge, I have no idea where to start from. Anyone is able to give suggestions or advice on this? I am happy to work on it, though it may take a longer time.
Thanks.
Hi shogun,
as I said you are free to check out from http://code.google.com/p/openwar-temp/ which is the current working version of my project. Should work out of the box with JMP. Right now there is only some stuff included like basic world map + entities and it will be another month till i find the time to work further on it because of university exams.
You could start to implement some kind of city ressource management based on turn mechanics. That’s what I planned to do if i find the time…
Just a little addition:
I was now able to take over the other repository (google transferred the ownership to me after some mails :P) so the new project address is
http://code.google.com/p/openwar/.
Enable the nightly builds in JMP and you should be able to run openwar in Win, Linux and Mac (all tested just now). I guess that the project is mature enough to receive a public announcement in some days.
If you want to start the game in developer mode, add
–devas program argument in the project settings. Also tell me if you have problems in setting everything up
Dang, got sidekicked by RL-jobs, like you too, but DLed your trunk today…
Dodikles, could need some help, do I need to get openwar inside the jme3-folder to get it working?
How should the folder structure be, so I dont need the jme3-jars a second way on HDD?
Hey, good to have you back
Actually you just need the JMP for it. Open it, just check out the project and you are good to go by pressing the play button. I already implemented an in-game editor. Press ‘G’ to display the tiles, press ‘X’ to get into cursor mode, press ‘TAB’ to go into drawing mode
Press ‘1’, ‘2’ and ‘3’ to change between tiles, regions and climates layer and press ‘ENTER’ to dump the edited files into the game root folder. Also the minimap is already clickable and right now I’m doing interface and scripting enhancements.
As you can see I load everything trough xml-files, so very moddable
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Hmm, even failed to get the JMP working yet. Is there any good tutorial how to set it up?
I only found this: Creating a jMonkeyEngine SDK plugin :: jMonkeyEngine Docs but also I have to guess a lot there, because my netbeans menu-names are not in english and there are no images, where to find things… 