Coming up: combat concept test

[PlaintextMan]

I'm working on a little (heh) prototype based on some ideas I have for major improvement of the Gearhead combat system (to-hit and damage calculation). It is similiar to JH's combat_test program he made earlier. My hope is that if I can formulate a few good but simple (enough) ideas and then show how well they work, Joseph Hewitt and the other GH coders will have a reliable (and easier) point to start from in order to improve GH's currently lacking combat system. I know that that is no small undertaking, but me just throwing another unproven idea out there isn't going to help much.

I started coding about a week and a half ago. The program is coming along nicely; now its up to actually just balancing the system into something acceptable and that demonstrates the features well (evasion, weapon aim speeds, shot grouping, penetration, gametime-slices). Oh, and I still have to implement burst values, and I need to implement recoil, stability, and... lots of stuff, but I'll probably leave many of them for a second prototype release if the concept seems interesting.

It took quite long so far just to make something to test my to-hit/damage system idea in, because I had to write a ton of code just to create a framework to put it in (data file loading, all the data structures, UI). Well, it was either that major undertaking, or the one of cracking open GHAR's source code itself and programming in there. I guess I chose the difficulty I know above the difficulty I don't. And anyway, with all due respect, I'm allergic to Pascal.

Anyhoo, I got nice evasion and damage penetration effects apparent already, even though the interface is still so terse. I've been quite busy lately, but I think I'll get her nice and suitable for uploading here (or to github) within this week.

I must mention one thing, though: my concept makes extensive use of real-numbered values internally. I actually use some trigonometry at some points like calculating apparent sizes of objects at given distances and such. to  It is not very table-top like with dice-like rolls and all that. Still I tried to keep it fairly simple conceptually, so I still think it could be applicable to Gearhead, and if not directly then it may make for some interesting food for thought.

EDIT: wanted to submit a few screenshots, but apparently this forum doesn't support direct uploads. It's late and I'm too lazy to look for an alternative right nau.

[SharkD]

Sounds good! Let us know how you progress.

[PlaintextMan]

Sounds good! Let us know how you progress.

Thanks for the encouragement.

Things have unpleasantly slowed down, but I'm making good progress considering what else is eating away at my time at the moment (very bad illness decided to join the ranks of those yesterday, so I'm slowly recovering).

I've just finished implementing burst fire and moving the combat system code into a seperate module which I made fairly tidy (the rest of the code isn't) so others can attempt understanding it and playing with it.

Right now I'm calling it a day. What still remains is adding moar stuff into the test data files (I already got a Buru Buru and some weapons in there for testing), making the start-up scenario config-loadable instead of hardcoded and of course testing out a few scenarios before releasing.

EDIT: I have to mention, once again, that for now it's Linux/*nix only since I'm using ncurses for the interface. The UI code is fairly isolated though, so it shouldn't be too hard to port.

[PlaintextMan]

Allright! She's not yet exactly the way I wanted 'er, but I think the system is demonstrated fairly OK by this prototype.

If all goes well, I'll be registered on GitHub in a few hours and I'll put muh stuff there.